


Datura

by Katsitting (Nekositting)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Parallel Universe, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Creepy Fluff, Dubious Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Tom Riddle, Female Tom Riddle is Eighteen Years Old, Gratuitous Porn Mostly, Harry is Seventeen Years Old, Mental Breakdown, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Tom Riddle, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Some Plot, Temporary Character Death, This messes heavily with consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-03-24 00:59:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13800042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nekositting/pseuds/Katsitting
Summary: “Are you afraid of me, Harry?”His mouth opened, but no words came. His mind blanked, his cheeks draining completely of whatever color had stained them in response to the curious note of Riddle's voice. It sounded innocuous enough. Harmless with how casual she’d asked the question, but Harry knew better.





	1. Enchantress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cybrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cybrid/gifts).



> Hello, everyone! I know, I should probably finish the other story (Phobia) I have that needs completing, and trust me when I say that I will. I just got swept away by this idea posed by my lovely friend, Cybrid. This was supposed to be a PWP, but as always, I like to build in some set up before I get there. _sweats_
> 
> I've been itching to write a Fem! Tom Riddle story for a long time now (if ya'll thought I would stop with Ladymort? Ya'll were _wrong_ ), so here it is. Please mind the tags, my stories get real. They will be updated as I post. 
> 
> This story will be updated every one or two weeks depending on the chaos of my semester.

Harry was staring he knew, had been for the past half-hour if the hands on the clock were true to the hour.  
  
It should have embarrassed him to be doing this, but he couldn’t help it. Everything about this situation was strange. Wrong, somehow. Like if everything in the small classroom had been shifted five centimeters to the left without his awareness.

“Mr. Evans.”

Harry jolted, back now erect as he tore his gaze away from the girl he’d been staring at to level Professor Slughorn a sheepish glance.

“Pardon, ma’am?” He asked, cheeks flushing when the walrus-like woman pouted, brows screwing together to give him a disappointed frown. “I-I didn’t hear the question.”

It was true. He hadn’t been paying any attention, so caught with the dark tresses on the back of the girl’s head. Her pale fingers dexterously moving about the vials and the ingredients with a precision not even Snape from his own time was capable of mimicking.

The girl was a genius. A prodigy in every sense of the word. Unlike the boys and girls that slaved for hours in the library, searching for answers to future exam questions in class. Not that Slughorn was necessarily a harsh instructor, or particularly difficult, but still. There was some preparation necessary, even if a little.

This girl made it all seem easy. Put even Hermione to shame when she raised her hand and answered questions without seeming overly eager. It made any effort Harry made seem lackluster. Not that Harry was trying to butter the woman up. He had already done so once before in his own time, and he refused to be put through that whole thing again.

No, the reason for his efforts now was _not_ for Slughorn.

It was really for his own sake. To _fit in_ when he clearly did not. Harry Potter was not meant to be here in the 1940s, in a time where everything was the same but also wasn’t.

Because this girl, the creature that sat only one row away from the front with other Slytherin girls, was none other than _Tom Riddle._

How this came to be, how Harry had ended up in the correct time but clearly in the wrong universe, he didn’t know. He’d spent days ransacking the library, hinting to his professors about the possibilities of something like this happening, and—

It all had amounted to nothing.

There was a pause, a moment where Slughorn sighed deeply, loud enough for everyone in the silent classroom to hear, before she turned her attention to regard the exact person Harry had been staring at earlier.

Ice cut through his veins when Slughorn’s expression turned pensive, and then her eyes brightened with something that looked _disturbingly_ like determination. Harry knew where this was going. The attention the professor had put on Riddle, the way she placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder before turning her gaze back to him told him all that he needed to know.

So it came as no surprise when Riddle, after Slughorn whispered Merlin knew what into the girl’s ear, turned in his direction.

Harry wanted to duck his head and pretend she wasn’t looking at him, but he couldn’t. His body had frozen stiff, her dark eyes magnetic as if they held their own gravitational force. As if someone had cast some sort of compulsion spell that forced him to really look at her.  
  
An action he had refused to do since coming to this time, unable to reconcile the fact that this girl was Riddle. That that pale skin, luminous and smooth beneath the faint light emanating from the light source above, was the Dark Lord.  
  
_Or was she?_  
  
Her lips were pink, soft and full. Eyes slanted, sharp and angled as if they could cut through stone with just a flutter of her long lashes. Her face was heart-shaped, a careful balance between the soft swell of her cheeks and the hard lines of her jaw and nose. Pretty in every conceivable way, and a carbon copy of the boy she had been in his time but now wasn’t.

Where Tom had been powerful, fluid and deliberate like the coil of a deadly serpent, she was elegance incarnate. A queen that carried herself through court without so much as a glance to either side of her. Caring not for the peons around her unless they could do something for her. As if no one else mattered but _her._

Though no one truly saw that particular aspect to the girl. She always looked mild mannered. _Kind._ A sweet girl that smiled fondly, that spoke rather politely to her instructors in spite of the absurd things that might come out of their mouths.

A lady, that was what she was, but Harry would not let himself be fooled. He would not mistake her for doe, for a startled bird caught in the maw of the angry serpents of her house.

She ruled them without saying a word. A subtle tension working behind the scenes that had he not been mindful of, had he not bothered to pay attention when stalking Draco Malfoy all those years back in his time, he would have missed.

Tamsin Gormlaith Riddle, regardless of her gender, of the clever ploy she’d crafted to wrap all around her web of lies, was a predator. Tom Marvolo Riddle still rested within her chest.

Her fingers were delicate and refined, but there was power in the way she moved them. They were still spidery, long and supple as her male counterparts’ had been. Though now, they were softened. Less calloused where Tom had ridges along the ends of his fingers.

She was tall, still. One of the tallest girls in the school save for a girl that _surely_ had to be related to the Bulstrode of his time. But he couldn’t see her height now, sitting where she was.

He only saw her face, stomach twisting in an odd way when her lips immediately curved into a sweet smile.

“Harry, I’ve just spoken to Miss Riddle, and it seems that she is perfectly alright with partnering up with you for this project.”

Harry blinked, shifting his attention back to Slughorn’s face. The woman looked pleased with herself, the twinkle in her eye making Harry green with nausea. It was clear what Slughorn wanted from this whole thing, what she was thinking by stopping the whole lesson to put Riddle and himself together.

She thought Harry had a _crush_ on Riddle.

A wild laugh wanted to escape him, vicious and disbelieving. It was hogwash. Utterly absurd, but somehow, Slughorn being the person she was, had interpreted his quiet staring for something else.

_Well, better this than the alternative._

If this would get the Slughorn off his back, then he’d allow the woman to think what she did. It suited him just fine really. It would steer Riddle completely out of his way, to be mistaken for another pauper that wanted to ask for her hand in marriage in this era.

Because that was _all_ anyone ever talked about here. Marriage, bloodlines, and heirs to pass down their knowledge to the next generation to come.

Riddle never seemed to partake in those discussions. At least, Harry had not overheard her state her opinion on the matter or mention that she was interested.

Though that didn’t mean that Harry would accept this lying down. He didn’t want to be near her. Not really. It was easier to watch from a distance, better to remain as unseen as possible than have her attention trained on him.

The attention of the Dark Lord, whether female or not, was the last thing anyone wanted. Terrible things happened to those that managed to pique their interest. Harry Potter knew this fact well, having lived it once before already.

“I-er, thank you, ma’am. You didn’t have to do that, you just caught me off guard is all—” Harry tried to say before he was abruptly cut off by a wave of the woman’s hand, a short laugh erupting from the her lips.

“Nonsense!” Slughorn said, stepping back and pointing to the empty seat that no one had bothered to fill in all the time Harry had been there. It’d been two months since he arrived to this universe’s version of the 1940s and not a single person had bothered to partner with Riddle in that time.

She’d always worked alone. Until now.

_Well, here goes nothing._

“Well, if it’s alright with _her_.” Harry said, reluctantly tearing his gaze from Slughorn’s smiling face to look at the girl in question. Her eyes were trained on him, as if she’d been gazing at him from the moment Slughorn had brought him to her attention.

There was no way for him to know what it was that Slughorn said, but Harry sincerely hoped that it hadn’t been anything damning. He didn’t think he could stand this lesson with Riddle breathing down his neck because of this small hiccup.

There was a small pause where no one said a word. The room was deathly silent, the only sign that there were others besides them in the room, the occasional rustling of a bag and the soft whisper of a student speaking into the ear of another that Harry didn’t bother to listen to.

Then, Riddle parted her lips, a pink tongue licking at the bottom of the flesh, and she spoke.

Harry hated that he followed the motion, eyes drawn to the pearlescent sheen of her lips.

“Of course, I am always willing to give a helping hand to those that need it.”

A shudder crawled up his spine at the soft tenor of her voice, and the way it was barely above a whisper. It was powerful, carrying itself across the room in spite of its softness. Similar in a way to Voldemort’s own hisses when he’d been speaking into Harry’s mind as he slept.

It was disturbing. _Jarring._

Harry ignored it and rose from his seat, the screech of his chair like someone had cast a bombarda in the quiet room. It made him uncomfortable, hyper-aware of all the eyes on him.

_Calm down, Harry. Just pretend it’s like any other day since you fell into this alternate universe._

“Thank you, you’re too kind, Riddle.” Harry replied, respectful and polite in spite of the acid churning in his stomach. The last thing he wanted was to sit beside her, but Slughorn had given him no choice. It would be impolite to say no, it would look _odd_ for him to be repulsed by a girl that everyone simply adored.

Except perhaps the Slytherins that knew her for what she truly was. Those snakes were just afraid of her.

After making the short walk, Harry took the seat to the girl’s right. It was spacious enough that he didn’t have to brush up against her, but still close enough to catch a whiff of the perfume she wore.

It was faint. Nothing like the powdery and gaudy scents many of the richer students bathed themselves with. It was almost like the comforting scent of lotion rather than that of some artificial smells girls and even _boys_ in this bloody school used.

“So, class, about this group assignment…” Slughorn said after a moment, glancing at both Harry’s and Riddle’s faces before continuing on to explain the term assignment.

Harry tried to ignore as best he could the burning stare of the girl at his side. It was almost like a physical touch, her gaze making gooseflesh pucker along his back from its intensity.

“Staring is rude, you know.” Harry said tightly when Slughorn went on about the assignment, but the girl had yet to turn away.

He didn’t bother to look at her, eyes glued stubbornly to the professor as he went on, hoping that this would somehow make the minutes tick by faster.

“I could say the same to you, Mr. Evans.” The girl demurred at his side, her chair creaking slightly with the weight of her body. “You yourself have not been subtle with your wandering eyes.”

Swallowing hard, Harry finally turned to face the girl, unable to ignore it any longer when her arm swept over the desk to push some of her belongings further into her space and away from his.

“That’s not what I—” Harry tried to protest, but the sight of her lips parting into a soft smile stopped him. Her cheeks were rosy, even more so than they’d looked from a distance. Her eyes were sparkling, the tight ring of brown more pronounced now that he was so close to her.

Her dark hair was brushed along her neck, the curls perfectly coiled and brushed to the sides of her throat. It made her look paler somehow. Softer. Like an angel rather than the demon she was, and Harry wondered if _this_ was how she managed to wrap everyone around her finger.

If it was this disarming beauty paired with the soft lilt of her voice that drowned reason and subdued even the most stubborn of wills.

Harry’s lip twisted into a frown, eyes narrowed into slits when the girl cocked her head to one side. It was a serpentine gesture. Predatory and familiar in the way she scrutinized him, like how Voldemort had done when Harry had had the misfortune of facing him Fifth year.

“Oh? But that was exactly what you were doing, no?” The girl teased, and Harry glared at her, irked. He didn’t like this, didn’t like this sudden playfulness. She hadn’t been this way with others, hadn’t observed such conduct in all the time he’d been here.

She was always polite, but distanced at the same time. This was different, and Harry didn’t like it one bit.

“I don’t know what the professor told you, but I wasn’t. I just spaced out while looking in your general direction. It happens.”

The girl did not move. It did not even seem as if she registered what he’d said. Then, her lips parted, her damned tongue peeking out to sweep at her bottom lip, and Harry’s spine twinged with unease.

Harry did everything to resist glancing at her tongue, focusing instead on the arch of her perfectly plucked brows.

“The professor did not have to tell me anything. You were practically boring a hole into the back of my head.” She said. Harry clenched his jaw. She wasn’t wrong. He had been staring at her for a solid thirty minutes that day.

“Though, this isn’t the first time, is it?” She asked, and Harry flinched when the girl suddenly leaned in as if to get a better look at his face, eyes boring peculiarly into his own. “Ever since you transferred in, you’ve been looking at me as if I were going to eat you.”

Harry swallowed, mouth parting to speak, but stopped when the girl followed the motion of his adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Her eyes took him in, practically ate him alive without a single touch from her behalf.

His nerves came to life, adrenaline coursing through his veins as if he were rearing up for a duel.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Harry denied, lips screwed into a stubborn line while the girl only smiled at his answer. She didn’t believe a word he said, so it seemed.

“I _wonder_ just why that is.” She said instead, creeping further into his space and forcing Harry to lean back into his chair, his side pressed uncomfortably against the table. She was overwhelming in a way that he didn’t recall Hermione ever being. Hell, none of the girls he’d met, girls like Pansy Parkinson or Daphne Greengrass had been nearly this intimidating.

There was Cho, or maybe Ginny, too. But this was a different kind of scary. A sort that made his hands sweat and his fingers shake with discomfort. He didn’t like it at all; not the way her eyes seemed to flash with something he didn’t understand or the way his heart rate picked up at catching the way her mouth curled.

Narrowing his gaze further, Harry was about to tell her exactly _where_ she could take her damned assessment, when Slughorn’s voice interrupted his train of thought.

“Alright, classed dismissed! If anyone has any questions about the project, or any issues with their partners, please feel free to see me at my office. Now off you go, I won’t be held accountable if you miss your classes!”

It was like a crack of a whip. Everything abruptly stopped, the girl’s strange expression and oppressive presence dissipated as if it never was.

She leaned back, the dangerous curl of her lip and glimmer of her eyes shuttering away into the pleasant mask she always wore.

Harry could only gape, unable to do much else when she rose, her skirt fluttering like the wings of a butterfly before she brandished her wand without a word and cleared the desk. Leaving it spotless and untouched, as if she had not occupied this desk for the past hour and a half.

“It was a pleasure speaking with you.” She said after flicking her wand a second time, summoning the bag that carried her belongings to the hand not holding her wand. “I look forward to working with you, _Harry_.”

Harry tried not to shudder when her voice dropped an octave, his _name_ sounding sinful and depraved when uttered by that mouth. It made his skin crawl, his insides wrench in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time, not since he’d been forced into side-along apparition all those months ago.

_Like a hook tugging at your navel right? Insides forced out from the small puncture between your belly and your intestines._

Then, with a secretive smile Harry had no explanation for, the girl turned her back on him and left. The clicks of her shoes, the rustling of her skirt and robes the only sound he was capable of making sense of.

Her words and the strange distress curling in his belly the only evidence that Harry had brushed up against a predator rather than a woman.


	2. Artemis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if you enjoyed the chapter. It is shorter than usual, but these plot things tend to be this way.

Harry wanted to kill Slughorn. He wanted to ring the woman’s neck and never let go until she was purple and blue.

Ever since the woman had taken things into her own hands, everything had been a total mess. Nothing was as it was. The girls, the boys, and the lot of them were treating him as if he’d sprouted a second head overnight. As if by virtue of him being paired with Riddle, he had somehow taken on some of her reputation by default.

Before, he had been a nobody. No one would speak to him save to ask him to pass the salt or the gravy across the table. It was peaceful. Calm. The kind of peace that he had wanted when he first set foot in Hogwarts’ walls when he had been eleven. 

Now, however, everything had changed. He hadn’t noticed it at first, of course. It wasn’t something that happened overnight, an abrupt switch in the hierarchy that left most, if not all, confused. No. This came about gradually, like the slow boil of a polyjuice potion. An egregious and frustrating process that made even the most patient bastards want to tear the hair from out of their heads. This was a slow degradation, a cancerous overthrow of the status quo.

“ _ Do you think Riddle might want to marry  _ him _? I suppose he’s handsome enough…” _

Harry frowned into his plate, appetite lost when a gaggle of girls at the Ravenclaw table pointed in his direction and giggled, the source of that blasphemous phrase. The boys on the other end of his Gryffindor table fared no better, laughing and jeering at him when he made the mistake of glancing in their general direction.

“ _ As if Riddle would  _ really  _ go for this bloke…” _

It was annoying. To be forced into the spotlight all over again after Harry had gotten accustomed to his privacy. He didn’t want to deal with the musings of others, or their damned opinions on his alleged romantic life.

It made his blood boil. 

_ Fucking Slughorn. _

It was all  _ her  _ fault. It was all the professor’s fault that Harry now had to deal with stupid comments from people he didn’t know and—

“Harry, do you have a moment?”

Harry jolted, fingers dropping his fork with a loud clatter onto the plate below him. The sound was sharp enough to rouse the attention of the some of the boys and girls on his table, and Harry frowned, chagrined at this fact. He didn’t want an audience, not when it was  _ her  _ voice that had startled him.

Not that he had much of a say in the matter. The peanut gallery was not going anywhere. After all, this was the dining hall, where everyone shared gossip and news of the war raging outside of the school. A cesspool where everyone either built or tore down the self-esteems of their peers.

It wasn’t far from the way things had been in his own time. The pettiness and the vicious attitude of children, it seemed, would never change. Even in an alternate universe that still left him more than a bit befuddled. A fact which should have been comforting, but wasn’t. 

His fame in the past had not been under pleasant circumstances, and he was certain that would be the case this time as well. The irony that this popularity was all due to Riddle’s influence was not lost on him. 

With a pleading glance above, and a silent prayer to a god Harry wasn’t certain was listening, he whipped around to face the source of his misery.

Riddle was standing a hair’s breadth away, her pleated skirt and robes grazing along his legs. Harry immediately recoiled, his back pressing against the table. 

The girl quirked a brow in response, her lip twitching at the corner. It looked as if she were about to smile, like she was tempted to laugh at the spectacle. Anger cut through his insides at the sight, and he straightened almost immediately, unwilling to make himself look even more like a fool.

It hardly mattered that Harry had already done so. He didn’t want to make this into a bloody trend. The humiliation he’d suffered at the hands of this girl was already one too many.

“What can I help you with?” Harry said cooly, or at least tried to with the audience boring their gazes into his back. It was uncomfortable how everything immediately stilled. A hush had fallen over everyone, and Harry almost swore he heard someone tell another to shut up further along the table. 

It was ridiculous. Everyone was behaving like a goddess had suddenly stepped into the room to address a mortal man.  She drew all eyes with only a sweet smile and a subtle tilt of her head. A spell Harry had no hope of unraveling. Not that he would ever attempt to since that would mean he would have to somehow  _ interact  _ with others. He already had trouble trying to fit in as it was, he didn’t need to draw attention to himself by bad mouthing Riddle.

That wasn’t even taking into account the fact that he’d landed far too late in the game to undo all that Riddle had done. The girl already held purebloods and muggleborn students alike in the palm of her hand. There was no hope of undoing all that she had done, not when he was a bloody stranger. An awkward, gangly boy that looked too malnourished and wild for the respectable and polished students currently within these walls.

All he could hope for was that things did not end poorly. Not that he had any idea how he was going to go about that. Riddle was a sixth year student and a prefect, just as she had been in the past. She was reaching for the head girl position for seventh year, and there was little doubt in his mind that she would acquire it.

His universe and hers had, thus far, aligned perfectly. Even when accounting for the differences her gender and her background surely made on her affluence in this time. 

Still.

Myrtle was dead. The chamber of secrets had been opened before he’d even arrived and Hagrid— _ Ruby Hagrid,  _ Harry amended—expelled from the school.

There was nothing that Harry could do for the timeline now, except perhaps hope that he made it through his schooling alive and relatively unscathed. Not that he wouldn’t at least attempt to do something if he witnessed Riddle doing something untoward.

The girl was far more secretive than her male counterpart. Devious and cynical, just as he was, but she was someone he couldn’t quite understand. 

It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. The first thing he’d done was follow her whenever it had seemed safe enough to do so. But he had learned  _ nothing _ , found no means of wrenching her tight grip on the baby death eater’s she was grooming to her tastes. It had all ended in failure. So his attempts at unhooking Riddle’s claws from the bloody backs of these damned students would do  _ nothing  _ for him in the present moment. 

All he had to hope for was that he’d be able to do something after they graduated.

“The potion. There’s something wrong with it.”

Harry pursed his lips, brows rising in suspicion. There was something  _ wrong  _ with the potion? 

Disbelief wracked through him. He wasn’t the most proficient at the art, but that did not mean he was stupid. The last time he had gone in to check on the project with Slughorn in the room, the bubbling liquid had looked fine. Perfect, in fact.

He didn’t believe it for a moment. 

In fact, he was certain that this was some ruse to get him alone with her. One of many ploys she had concocted in the past term to get him and her alone in one of the damned classrooms to brew their project. It was always subtle, but Harry saw through her. Knew for certain that she was trying to back him into a corner where he had no hope of getting out.

_ Nice try. _

“Well, what would I be able to do if that’s the case? I don’t know much about the potion you’re trying to brew, I’ve deferred to you so far,” Harry said, careful with the words he used. He didn’t want to make it seem like he didn’t want to  _ help  _ her. Not with those fucking eyes and ears trained on his conversation with Riddle. 

He didn’t want to look like the arsehole here. It would only make things more difficult, otherwise. He only had one more year after this one, but that last year could quickly turn into a nightmare if this was not handled carefully. 

It made him wonder if her public appearance at the present moment was another means of attempting to get him to agree. Anger twinged inside him, irritated at the possibility that she was trying to manipulate him through the use of their unwanted audience. 

_ I’m not giving you what you want. _

“I know you can work miracles, Riddle. I’ve seen you fix the unfixable, even.”

The words were like ash in his mouth, but they weren’t necessarily untrue. Riddle was talented in every conceivable way. She excelled in every class without seeming to study at all, though Harry suspected she at least had to be training somewhere to master her dark curses…

She was a Dark Lady in the making, it would be naive to assume she wasn’t doing that somewhere in the castle, if not in the Room of Hidden Things. Of course, Harry wasn’t going to announce that tidbit to the girl. If she was insufferable  _ now _ , he didn’t even want to imagine how she would act if he were to let that little fact slip.

It was bad enough she’d nearly caught him once or twice following her through the corridors when she was making her rounds.

Riddle pursed her lips, the twitch melting into a flattered smile. She was glowing, positively preening at being complimented in this way.

Harry couldn’t help but notice this fact in spite of his reservations, attention drawn at the way her cheeks glowed with pleasure. It was honest. An expression had never seen on the girl’s face before. It made her look radiant, like a  _ normal  _ girl rather than the queen everyone strived to become or marry by the end of the school year.

Harry was not entirely clueless of pureblood tradition. He knew arranged marriages and the like were still a thing. It was all the Slytherins seemed to talk about these days.

“You’re much too kind, Harry,” Riddle said, her hands smoothing through her hair and fixing her skirt. It was a nervous gesture, one that Harry had never seen her do before. It was as if she were caught between wringing her hands together or doing something else with her hands. 

It was...cute, Harry would begrudgingly admit. 

“If you’re confident I can make this potion work, then I’ll take your word for it,” she breathed, the words wobbly and light. Like she was struggling to speak the words and breathe at the same time. 

Harry’s brows furrowed, unsure of what to make of that. It was bizarre, but didn’t seem fake. It looked about as genuine as her delight in response to his meaningless compliment. It was almost enough to make him feel bad for faking it.  _ Almost _ .

She lived her life pretending to be something she wasn’t. Harry refused to be sorry for returning the favor. Her male counterpart had been a murderer in his time, just as the girl standing before him now would be.

“My apologies for interrupting your lunch, then. I will see you in Potions, Harry.”

Harry had expected her to leave after that, shoulders relaxing at the obvious dismissal in her words.

She didn’t. 

Rather than step away from him, she suddenly eclipsed the short space between them to press her fingers against the corner of his mouth. Her thumb grazed his trembling lip, following along the crack at the corner of his mouth in a gentle caress before pulling back. 

Harry was rooted in place, shocked. 

The girl was smiling at him, a calculating gleam in her eyes that made his heart race rapidly in his chest. It felt almost ready to burst.

“You had jam on the corner of your mouth,” Riddle purred before she stepped away from him and left, Harry’s back still pressed awkwardly against the table and mind still reeling with shock.

The room remained deathly silent before it suddenly exploded with excited whispers and murmurs. 

It took no time for the room to reanimate with further energy, for plates to clatter against the wooden table and conversation to begin anew, louder and far more excited than it had been before. It was as though Riddle’s dramatic exit had broken the spell that had befallen everyone in Hogwarts.

All except for Harry’s, of course.

His mouth burned where she touched him. It lingered like a phantom touch, insistent in the way it made his cheeks suddenly heat with unsolicited embarrassment. He hadn’t expected that at all. She’d taken him completely off-guard, and  _ everyone  _ in that room had seen it.

Harry wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Wanted to, more than ever, to purge his insides for reacting the way that they had at her touch. His heart was racing a mile a minute, his fingers trembling and tingling with the urge to trace along the burning path Riddle had seared into his skin.

_ I look forward to working with you, Harry. _

Swallowing, Harry banished the memory of her voice during their first ever encounter. He didn’t know where that had come from, and why he was as affected as he was, but this had to stop. It all had to stop  _ now _ . 

It was wrong. It was unacceptable. Whatever these emotions were, whatever game Riddle was playing, Harry refused to be strung along like some glorified chess piece.

Determined, Harry rose from his seat, his plate of food relatively untouched and desperate to make his own exit. He suddenly found himself no longer interested in being trapped in a room with everyone watching his every move. Their eyes were trained on him, waiting for the second Harry left to begin betting on just when Riddle would wrap him around her pinky finger, and he was in  _ no  _ mood for that.

Harry sneered.

_ Not bloody likely. _

As if Harry would ever allow that to happen.


	3. Discordia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's definitely been some time since I updated this one. I apologize for this, school had me caged. 
> 
> This is un-betad, so if you see anything odd, don't be alarmed. I just wanted to get this out here, this story is incredibly fun :)
> 
> If you like, please leave a comment!

After the spectacle in the dining hall, everything had settled into relative peace. Sure, the students still whispered behind his back about him and Riddle, but it was harmless stuff. They could whisper and talk all they wanted, it did not mean that he would actually do any of what they gossiped of.

Let them talk. No harm had ever come from something as innocuous as that.

As if he could ever be interested in  _ Riddle. _

All Harry cared about was ensuring that Lord Voldemort simply didn’t rise again. That was the extent of his interest. Nothing his peers, or even Professor  _ Slughorn,  _ said would make him think otherwise. 

That didn’t mean, however, that the gossip wasn’t annoying. It was unbearable. Far worse than it had ever been back in his own time when he’d been the famous Boy-Who-Lived. And, of course, all the blame lied with Riddle. If she hadn’t made a spectacle in the middle of the dining hall, then perhaps he wouldn’t have to listen to the all the perverse and gross whispers the Gryffindor boys kept muttering to one another.

Who bloody  _ cared  _ about what Riddle looked like in her knickers? It was none of his business. He didn’t even want to know, let alone listen to others jostle him for naughty tidbits about the girl when her attention was turned elsewhere.

The  _ nerve  _ of those boys, asking him if he’d ever seen her knickers. 

It made him nauseous just imagining a scenario where he would see her naked. The insinuation had been enough to make him go several shades scarlet. A reaction anyone within a mile radius of their table had noticed. 

Merlin, he hated this. If only they  _ knew  _ that Harry would rather take his chances with a dragon than be anywhere near Riddle. 

...Except that he was and he had no choice in the matter. And it was precisely because no one knew who Riddle was that forced him into this predicament in the first place. Harry was the only one that knew. Not even Dumbledore, with her all-seeing eyes, could unravel Tamsin Riddle’s web.

She was suspicious of Riddle, just as Dumbledore from Harry’s universe had been, but it was all conjecture. There was no evidence. Harry had yet to find anything incriminating. So far, he’d left empty-handed each time he’d tried.

Harry rubbed his hand over his scar, an unconscious habit he’d developed. It didn’t comfort him in the least, but it was familiar. The only thing from his own universe that remained consistent. 

“The first Goblin Rebellion extended from the—”

...Right. Perhaps not everything was different. Professor Binns, even as a woman, was still a bore.

It was comforting in a way, but not welcome. It gave Harry too much time for his thoughts to roam, to skirt past the subject of goblin wars and to a topic that hit more closely to home. 

Like Tamsin Riddle and  _ how  _ he planned to deal with her. He’d been at Hogwarts for months already and he’d yet to figure that shite out. Frankly, he had no idea what he was doing.

Harry knew he couldn’t just let the girl do as she wanted. He wasn’t about to suffer through sixth year for a second time for nothing.

_ But— _

Harry ground the crown of his teeth together in irritation.

_ —what are you actually going to do about her? _

At the moment, there wasn’t anything he could do. Sure, he could try exposing her to the school staff, but he needed  _ evidence  _ for that first. He needed more than a bad feeling. No one would believe him on his word alone. Especially when she behaved perfectly with everyone else. Including the muggleborn students in other houses, much to his surprise. 

The inaction made him antsy, his fingers itching to do something reckless. But he had held that urge back, knowing that it’d only draw attention to himself. He didn’t need Riddle to become suspicious of him. 

She was already a handful without it. The student body did not help matters much either, with their stupid quips and unwanted commentary on their alleged “dating” lives.

Harry groaned internally. 

It was all horrid, really. He didn’t think he could survive much more of this, especially when his thoughts always turned back to the fact that this was neither  _ his  _ time or  _ his  _ universe. Whatever he did here had no bearing on what happened to his own timeline or universe. 

It didn’t  _ matter.  _ None of it did. But telling himself to just let Riddle do as she pleased…well, that was easier said than done. These people were people that played an influential role in his timeline. They even resembled people he knew from his own time.

They weren’t the same, even if they spoke and looked like persons he had known in his own universe. Their genders were inverted, their stories somewhat revamped to fit the experiences that shaped them into the persons that they were here. It was strange in many ways, like looking into a mirror world where everything on the surface layer had been subverted.

And this, unfortunately, included Riddle as well. 

Because even she, despite everything within him telling him otherwise, was not identical to her counterparts. She was soft where Voldemort and Tom were hard edges. Always distanced when Harry was certain Tom or Voldemort would have approached him, hounding him for answers that Harry knew he could not give. Tamsin always kept her distance, even if her gaze lingered on his face for longer than necessary. 

She never pushed, never spoke to him unless Harry spoke to her first. Their fingers occasionally brushed when handling potion ingredients in class, but that was more an accident than a truly planned affair from her part. It was as if she’d retracted all of the unsavory characteristics she possessed while in his presence, and Harry had no explanation for such a change.

The calculation he had witnessed upon their first conversation had evaporated like smoke, but Harry knew there were still traces of that shrewdness lingering around the corners of her mouth and the slant of her eyes. She was manipulative, brazen, and direct, but now, she was everything but.

Well-behaved, observant, and condescending when she wished to be, but no more than that. She wasn’t even  _ murderous _ , as Harry imagined Tom might be when surrounded by amorous suitors and admiring girls. No, she was almost like any other girl save for her astounding magical prowess and beauty.

She took it all in stride, and at times, even  _ encouraged  _ the advances. 

The first time Harry had seen that, he thought he’d been hexed. Because that couldn’t  _ possibly  _ be Tom Riddle’s female counterpart flirting with a bloke and talking fashion with another pureblood girl. It was mundane and weird.

She was  _ still  _ intimidating. That, Harry, would not deny even if he was often confused by her warmer interactions with others. Riddle was still frightening in her own way, especially when her attention was entirely on him. It didn’t mean she necessarily planned to get him alone and kill him, but it still made his heart race to know that she was looking at him.

She was unpredictable. Nice and warm in some moments, but also cold and predatory in others. 

Harry did not know what to make of any of this. He was suspicious of her intentions, but at this point, he was too tired to expect the worst. It was too exhausting to wake up in the middle of the night, heart racing with an uncontrollable fear of what she might do. He couldn’t keep that up. 

She hadn’t done anything. She didn’t even seem as if she suspected he knew more about her than he should. 

So Harry, against all reason, perhaps even stupidly, had let it go. At least, forced himself to not worry as often as he did about what she might do to him should she find out.

He read too much into her interactions. He saw monsters with open mouths where there were none. He saw awareness, a spark of realization in her gaze, when her eyes were nowhere to be found. He had had to stop, and the notion in itself was terrifying because it had been so  _ easy _ .

A terrifying notion, if he was being honest because he knew he  _ should  _ be distressed. His mind rebelled at the very idea of foregoing his paranoia for the begrudging acquiescence he now complied with, but it let him  _ sleep  _ at night. Harry knew better than anyone that he shouldn’t let himself become complacent, forget that she was a viper stalking its quarry before sinking her venomous fangs into its neck…

But he couldn’t help it. He was just so  _ tired _ . This wasn’t his time nor his universe. It  _ wouldn’t _ make a difference to his own time. It wouldn’t make a difference to his own  _ universe _ . All his efforts would only keep the beast at bay temporarily, until she turned her attention to something else. She, just like her counterparts, would always be greedy and covetous of objects and persons that were just outside her grasp.

There wasn’t a single thing Harry could do at that moment either. Worrying and stressing over these things he could not control would not help the situation. That, of course, didn’t mean he didn’t care about what she was doing. He still planned to do all that he could to dethrone her, to show the world just who she was. 

He didn’t want people to die, didn’t want anyone to experience the crushing weight of death as he had fifth year. No, he wanted to do everything within his power to fix it now that he couldn’t get himself out of this mess. But to do that, he needed to rest. 

There was no way Harry could ensure that Riddle did not wreak havoc over Wizarding Britain as her other counterpart had while pulled apart at the seams. There was no telling how long he would manage without inevitably snapping and unraveling his own secrets to the girl. It would all amount to nothing if he did, even if there were times he doubted his actions in the future would matter in the end...

That train of thought was equal parts more dangerous than his complacency. It trod the line of hopelessness, of giving in to the future Riddle wished to cultivate with a patient curl of her lips.

Harry had to resist those doubts. He had to  _ hope  _ that what he did would amount to something. He just had to be  _ patient _ . Easier said than done, but it was all he could do until he found a lead or she somehow slipped up...

Harry leaned back in his chair, hand tucked under his chin as he tried not to fall asleep at the sound of Professor Binn’s voice. It was another Gryffindor and Slytherin course, and though that certainly resulted in some chaos considering the rivalry between the two houses, at the present moment, Harry was  _ bored _ .

His thoughts were wandering in directions he didn’t want to think of, memories of his past and of the people he’d incidentally left behind when the bloody time turner had broken within his hold, rearing their ugly heads. 

_ Because that’s just how these things go, isn’t it?  _

Then, a hand brushed along his shoulders, sweeping through his riotous curls to scratch along the nape of his neck. A pleased sound rumbled from his lips, and he leaned into it, noticing how those long nails felt against his clammy skin, and how the heat in those fingers sank into his flesh like the porous membrane of a sponge.

“Harry?” A soft, feminine voice murmured into his ear. He didn’t recognize it at first, mind hazy and cloudy, realizing in that instance that he had, in fact, fallen asleep in class when he’d allowed his thoughts to wander. “Class is over. Unless you want to sleep at this desk rather than in your bed, I suggest that you get up.”

The voice was amused,  _ familiar _ . It was a drawl that followed him into his dreams, that knitted itself around his bones and spread through his insides until he was a living conduit for its heat. It was decadent, smooth as the surface of a silken shawl.

He mumbled, leaning further into it in the hopes that this person would keep touching him that way, that they would keep scratching at him lightly. As if he were the most precious person in the world, wanted and desired. 

The fingers curled possessively around his neck, nails now cutting along his neck. 

Harry shot awake at the twinge of pain, a jolt of misplaced heat spreading from that point of contact and further up his spine.

Twisting around, Harry nearly toppled from the chair when the owner of those fingers that had touched him so gently, so  _ reverently _ , was none other than Riddle herself. The memory of her touch pulsed in time with the beating of his heart. Everything within him urged him to press his fingers to where her fingers had touched, to soothe the sting and chase after that heat he hadn’t expected to emanate from those fingers.

_ What was this? _

Harry’s mind was in a frenzy, heart beating so fast that it was ready to burst. The touch had felt so nice, her presence had felt so  _ good _ . It was more shocking than her thumb on his lip, the ghost of her touch barely there for him to recall after the day that it happened….

But this  _ heat _ , this awareness he had refused to recognize until this moment, threatened to swallow him whole. He wasn’t prepared for it, hadn’t anticipated it, and now he was gaping at the girl with a deep flush on his cheeks that he couldn’t will away.

“Harry?” She asked, voice shaping his name as if it were the sweetest thing to pass through her lips, and Harry broke. He couldn’t do this.

He was on his feet before he knew it, hand grabbing onto his bag without taking his eyes off her. His desire to run so poignant that Harry, uncaring of the fact that he looked like a coward, turned and left her without a second glance. 

He was out the door before he even realized, his many years of running from Dudley and his cruel friends, his time fleeing from curses flung in his direction and more, aiding him in his escape. 

Students turned to glance his way, shouts and questions were thrown in his direction, demanding that he stop running or that he stop for a moment and tell them  _ why  _ he was running in the first place. He didn’t answer any of them, didn’t stop to entertain their curiosities or obey their stuffy orders because he needed to go back to his dorm in Gryffindor tower. He needed something familiar, a way of grounding himself from the strange sensation that had swept him away. 

_ Merlin, what was that? _

It didn’t matter that he was skipping the rest of his lessons for this. That he was being a coward for refusing to face the horrifying reality of what this sensation meant, of what all of his stupid  _ teenage  _ reactions had meant since the beginning.

Because that was what it was. Absolutely  _ stupid _ . 

He shouldn’t feel the way he felt, shouldn’t feel like she was slowly eroding him from the inside out like venom ate through healthy muscle and bone. The same way cancer spread through the human body, multiplying until there were millions of cells forcing the body to rot. 

Frustration swelled inside him, and with a sharp whisper of the password into the portrait, he was shuffling through the common room. Barely recognizing that he was interrupting a game of exploding snap, he swept past them and began to climb up the stairs, a stubborn set to his shoulders when some of his housemates shot curious glances his way. He ignored them, forcing the door open to his room and flinging himself onto his bed. 

_ Don’t think about it. _

Closing his eyes, Harry let himself sink into the comfort only these sheets could grant him. The only source of peace, of _familiarity_ , in a place that was completely turned on its arse. Like looking into a mirror world completely opposite to his, tortured by the similarities.   
  
The lessons, the houses, the rivalries, and the _magic_ were the same. But the people that mattered, but the people he _knew_ , weren’t.

People like Slughorn, like  _ Dumbledore.  _

Like Riddle.

_ Is she even Tom Riddle? Is she even the Dark Lord except by name and birth rite? _

Harry didn’t know, and it was that very fact that left him shaken to the core. 

He knew  _ Tom Riddle _ . Had known him inside and out, seen what others never had the misfortune of perceiving. The boy had wedged himself into his life and left his stain, his mark on his face for all the world to recognize. No one but Harry was capable of knowing him, of picking apart his secrets and uncovering the truth.

_ Tamsin Riddle _ , however, was someone else, and Harry found, more than ever, that he wished he still had the uncomplicated mess of the Dark Lord to deal with. Harry knew the Voldemort of his time, understood Tom Marvolo Riddle from the pensieve. But this girl was a  _ stranger _ . 

A complex creature that made him doubt himself, that made him doubt whether he even knew Tom Riddle at all. Because those eyes, though familiar; because those lips, though similar, were nothing like  _ Tom’s.  _ That inscrutable smile and that wicked gleam in her gaze did not belong on the face of the Dark Lord, and it drove him  _ mad. _

It made him wonder, if perhaps, he would win this battle of wills. If he’d been wrong in thinking that Tamsin Riddle was just like Tom Riddle in the first place…

Harry burrowed deeper into his sheets, thoughts racing on how to best approach the situation. If there was even a solution for the enigma that was Tamsin Riddle.


	4. Fraus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This are getting interesting now.
> 
> I apologize for the errors you might find in this draft. This chapter was un-betad.
> 
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed!

Harry tried to pretend he was fine. 

Like his present situation wasn’t suffocating him, and it was perfectly normal for him to be avoiding human contact by sitting alone in the library.

_ Everything was fine. _

He attended his lessons, did his homework, and sometimes sat in the common room to watch his housemates play a few games. He did everything he could to avoid thinking of Riddle and the complicated set of emotions just a whisper of her name could elicit.

It was difficult, made more into an obstacle by the constant whispering in the dining hall about his episode after Professor Binn’s lesson. No one dared ask him directly, but their pitying glances were enough to make even him wish he hadn’t made as big a scene as he had.

It was too late now, however. The deed was done.

Not that that observation made the situation any better. Telling himself that he could ignore it, that he could pretend nothing had happened, was easier said than done. The whispers were endless, the way their eyes followed along his back, trailed over his face as if somehow it would get him to speak up, suffocating. Their minds practically pled for Harry to sate their thirst for gossip, to explain why he did what he did.

Harry didn’t, of course. That was the last thing he would ever do. Not when he didn’t even know how to explain for himself why he had run like that, why he had bloody lost it at the feeling Riddle’s fingers along his skin.

It shouldn’t have elicited such a response. It shouldn’t have made him question all that he knew of her because she was still  _ Riddle _ . Even if she was a girl, her skin soft where Tom’s had been hard lines. They were the  _ same _ . They simply had to be.

_ But what if she isn’t, Harry? What if you’re wrong about her? Being a Slytherin isn’t a crime. _

Harry frowned, banishing the thought to the recesses of his mind. No, she was definitely Tom. Being a snake didn’t necessarily make anyone into a dark lord, but she was different. She had to be. Riddle had been good at pretending; an actor, a skilled  _ manipulator _ , and this girl would be no different. Tamsin Riddle would be just as talented, if not more so, than Tom himself had been.

Tom had elevated manipulation to a performance of the greatest kind. An art form that Harry was certain even the most skilled entertainers would be envious of. Tamsin would do so as well—the way she carried herself was more than enough evidence of this fact.

_ But what if you’re wrong? Can you be certain that she killed Myrtle without having witnessed it yourself? Prove that her father is buried deep in the ground after murdering him in cold blood? _

Harry shook his head as if to physically dislodge the various thoughts assaulting his mind. The thoughts lingered, however. Clung stubbornly onto his mind, refusing to let him abandon the ridiculous notion that Tamsin was just a  _ girl _ . He knew that it wasn’t a crime to try to fit in, to encompass the attributes of a house that extolled exploitation and machiavellian mindsets.

Slytherin simply had no place for the weak-willed and the simple-minded. And Riddle, if Harry knew her male counterpart as well as he believed, was neither of those things. To survive in that house, kindness and honesty had to be abandoned. Honor and traditional notions of fairness needed to be discarded for more useful skills such as deceit and flattery.

_ Can you blame her for trying to survive? Can you judge her for doing what she needed to in order to succeed in a house filled with terrible people? _

The logic was compelling, tempting in its simplicity and rose-colored idealism. He wanted to believe it, to cling onto the hope that she couldn’t be as terrible as her other counterpart, that the differences he saw in her were proof enough that perhaps she  _ wasn’t  _ Tom.

Still, he wasn’t entirely convinced. Shaking his head to dispel that naive belief because  _ of course, she was Tom!  _ Myrtle was dead. The Ravenclaw girl notably was absent from the row of students, the bloodshot eyes and the heavy-bags on Olive Hornby’s face evidence enough that Myrtle was taking her revenge at the present time.

Harry might not have seen Riddle perform the deed, might not have seen her disappear and murder Tom Riddle, Sr. in cold blood, but he didn’t  _ need  _ to. Nothing at the present time was different from his own universe except for their genders…

A headache began to form on his temples, and Harry, to will away the building pressure in the back of his eyes, pressed his palm against his forehead, avoiding his glasses, and brushed fingers against his scar. A habit he couldn’t dispel even when the connection between Riddle and him was attenuated at best now...his scar now thankfully dormant.

Time passed without interruption as if fate had decided at that moment to give him a moment of respite after the chaos of the previous weeks. It was...soothing in a way. To be alone, to have a moment to himself in the library without chaos. He’d been certain that someone would follow him in, that his curious onlookers would harass him about his non-existent relationship with Riddle.

But no one had. It was only him in the library. The scattered books and the mess of papers his only companions since he’d arrived and taken a seat in the corner furthest from the entrance, nearest to the Restricted Section. A place no one would think to find him, considering he’d never been interested in the place before now.

The library was more  _ Hermione’s  _ niche than his. A place he went out of duty than out of desire, knowing that if he wanted to figure something out for himself, he could do so at his own leisure. In the privacy of his own dorm if he so desired. Nothing a Muffliato couldn’t fix if he really wanted—

The soft click of shoes on the stone floor drew him from his musings. The steps echoed around the massive library as if thousands of students were passing through the shelves rather than the single person it had to be. It couldn’t be more, not when the steps, though distinct, were the same iterations of the same sound.

Harry stilled, unsure of what to do at that precise moment. He technically wasn't supposed to be where he was, hidden in the corner nearest to the Restricted Section like some unsavory character. Though it wasn't necessarily  _ wrong  _ to be there either. 

It didn’t mean he was up to something. That he was some sort of dark wizard in the making for choosing this precise spot. And yet, Harry was still nervous about being seen. There was just  _ something _ about being spotted in such a place that gave him the distinct impression that perhaps his decision to sit there in the first place hadn’t been a good one…

His heart raced, but Harry did not move. He slipped his shaking hand off the table, where it'd been laying limply on its surface, and shoved it into his pocket. He sought out the familiar warmth of his wand, sensing trouble before it came knocking on his door.

His instincts were running a mile a minute because, now that he thought more seriously about the situation, he realized that it was still rather early in the morning. There was only one  _ person  _ that would think to head to the library at this hour.

_ Please tell me it isn’t her. Please let it not be her— _

A breath was followed by the distinct sound of robes rustling in the wind, and then Riddle emerged from behind a sturdy bookshelf, a book tucked beneath her arm. The last person he wanted to see.

Her bag was nowhere to be found, and Harry's eyes narrowed at that, unsure of what to make of this. Had she left the bag elsewhere? Had she been in the library this entire time and only just announced her presence when she noticed Harry in the room with her?

Harry didn't ask but instead allowed the questions to percolate in his mind, unsure if he should even broach the topic at all. Until, that was, the girl suddenly smiled at him, eyes brightening as if she'd been presented with a delectable treat. It left him tongue-tied, mind in utter chaos to see  _ joy  _ in those dark eyes.

"Harry, what a pleasant surprise to see you here," the girl said, stopping several centimeters short of where he was sitting. Her tone was low and curious, her lips curling with deliberate slowness around his name.

A shudder crawled up his spine when she took that moment to assess him, taking him in from the top of his head, where his curls twisted chaotically, and down to the book sitting open at the table.

The perusal was inquisitive, unassuming in a way that Harry knew Riddle was not. It was...odd, made his insides tighter than they’d been moments before she’d entered the room.

"Ah, yeah. I just wanted some privacy, is all. Can’t study when everyone is messing around in the common room," Harry said after a moment, unable to stomach the way her eyes lingered a bit too long somewhere on his face, her mouth parting to release a short breath from between coral lips.

_ Stop staring, you idiot! _

Then, she stepped around where he was sitting, and Harry could only watch as she extricated the book she kept tucked under her arm and laid it on the table. It made a loud thud on the wooden surface, and Harry flinched at the way it echoed in the silent room.

"May I sit with you? I find that it is better to read with some company rather than alone," Riddle asked, already moving to take a seat without waiting for Harry's answer.

Harry ground the crown of his teeth irritably and shot the girl an exasperated look when she nudged the chair with her arm, eyes looking expectantly at him.

The “no” sat deliciously on his tongue. A temptation that he wanted to give into at that moment, but didn’t, choosing instead to quash the impulse. He knew better than to do something like that when he was alone with the girl. For one, this had the potential of giving him away. He was supposed to  _ like  _ her in some way.

He was allowed to be distant in some respects, but he still had to be polite. They had long since “improved” their relationship since their first encounter in potions. He had no excuse to treat her differently after that.

After all, Harry  _ Evans  _ didn't know this girl. He was a simple transfer student from America, unfamiliar with how things were run here. It was a good explanation for his peculiar behavior. A good cover he’d come up with on the fly to excuse his unfamiliarity with 1930s Britishisms.

He was an American now, and that just  _ had  _ to be why his slang was so different. His accent? Well, he’d carefully explained that he had parents that were British themselves. It was a perfectly good lie, one that had no basis in reality, but suited him just fine.

That was all he really needed to say. The best he could come up with in the limited time he had since he hadn’t intended on landing several bloody  _ decades  _ into the past. It was irrelevant that he knew absolutely  _ nothing  _ about Ilvermony.

At the time, he hadn’t needed to know. They’d taken him at his word. Though that didn’t mean he hadn’t  _ eventually  _ acquired some knowledge of the place. There were plenty of copies in the library about the school to furnish him with passable knowledge.

Thankfully, that had been enough to get him by. It had kept Riddle's attention away from him until this point, and he was confident that it would remain that way. Even if she was intimidating, a threat that Harry had no way of defending himself against.

She was still  _ human. _ Uncharted territory. A mystery that he was still trying to piece together with the limited knowledge he had of Tom Riddle from his own universe and time, but still. She was similar  _ enough _ for this to work. It wasn’t exactly full proof, but nothing some flattery and ego-stroking couldn’t fix.

That didn’t stop it from being a challenge, however. Reading her, piecing together just how her mind  _ worked _ , wasn’t exactly easy. It was like wading his fingers through sand, and hoping that the grains would remain clumped up together between his fingers rather than trickling from between the gaps.

"Sure, I don't mind," Harry said after a pause, swallowing audibly when her smile widened into a grin, eyes flashing brilliantly with something that Harry swore was  _ triumph _ , before sitting down.

Harry immediately drew his attention to the book, uncomfortable with the silence and the way she stared at him unabashedly. Her eyes were practically boring a hole into his head, similar to how she had done the first time they’d spoken in Potions…

Silence stretched between them, neither of them speaking a word, as Harry tried his best to ignore her presence.

It was a blessing that the table wasn’t small. Spacious enough for her feet to not “accidentally” brush against his, or for her things to crowd against his own mess of papers on the desk.

Harry didn’t want to touch her if he could help it. Not after the strange reaction he had experienced when her fingers had curled along his neck, rousing him from his fitful sleep.

_ Now if only she would quit bloody staring! _

Riddle’s eyes were roving over his face like she was trying to strip him bare with the just the power of her gaze. Wasn’t it enough that she had already inspected him? That she’d pretty much devoured him from head to toe with her gaze looking for Godric knows what on his face?

Harry sulked silently, lip curling into an irritated sneer when the girl did not stop.

“Would you cut it out? You’re making it hard to concentrate,” Harry hissed, tearing his eyes away from the page he most certainly had not been reading to level her with a glare.

The girl was no longer grinning, but there was a strange gleam in her eyes that made Harry think instantly of wolves rearing their fangs before a kill. She was like a beast waiting for her prey to step a toe out of line, and Harry wondered if this, perhaps, was the opening she’d been looking for since she’d found Harry in the library.

_ Don’t think about it, Harry. _

“Pardon?” Riddle said, and Harry repressed a frustrated groan at the genuine confusion in her voice.

_ No _ , Harry thought,  _ you don’t get to pretend you’re not doing anything wrong. _

“I said that you should quit the staring. It’s making me uncomfortable,” Harry repeated tersely, fingers still curled around his wand. The girl’s gaze flickered from his face to his arm in rapid succession, seemingly cataloging the gesture. Harry could not help but curl his fingers more tightly in response, tempted to pull the wand from his pocket and point it at her from beneath the table.

Harry didn’t, but the temptation was there. He would do it if she moved even a toe out of line.

Riddle’s head tilted to one side, almost imperceptibly. Her curls pooled to the left side of her neck, bearing more of that pale luminous skin to his gaze.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Harry blinked, realizing in that instant that he’d been  _ staring  _ at the flesh bared to him.

An embarrassed flush threatened to creep up his cheeks, but he crushed it before he felt its familiar heat along his cheeks. The girl was watching him too closely. He couldn’t afford to give this little fact away. That he was, against his better judgment, thinking of her as a normal Slytherin girl rather than the threat she would become.

_ That she is _ , a voice whispered in his mind when her smile widened into a toothy grin.

Then, her petite fingers smoothed over the desk’s wooden surface, past her side of the table and a few centimeters from his book. It took everything within him not to flinch away from it, to abandon his seat when her hand latched onto the book he’d been reading and remained there.

“Huh?”

Harry didn’t dare move, caught between leaving as quickly as possible and staying. He’d already run like a coward once already and that whole spectacle had nearly given the whole school a bloody  _ aneurysm _ . He wouldn’t do this a second time, not when he’d already made a mess of things for himself.

_ Nosy wankers. _

“I understand that you’re not pleased with the arrangement.” Riddle’s expression had become contrite as if she felt genuinely displeased with the fact that Harry did not like her or enjoyed working with her. Harry swallowed, unsure of how to proceed. “But if we’re going to make this work, you’re going to need to cooperate with me.”

Riddle leaned further over the table, eyeing the way her elbows knocked against the table lightly. Harry didn’t notice, distracted by the disappointment plain in her voice.

“L-Look, Riddle,” Harry began but stopped, his trail of thought lost when Riddle suddenly stood up and began to creep closer over the table, eating at the short space between them. Her arms splayed outward, palms flat on the table on either side of him, skimming past his books to consume more ground than Harry was comfortable with.

His heart raced, his stomach twisting violently at the earnest look on her face. Riddle would never look at him that way. No, never. This was the face of a normal girl. Her curled hair and the way her lips parted to breathe in soft puffs of air were evidence of this. She looked normal,  _ human.  _

 

Unlike the serpentine features of a monster born from the boiling waters of a cauldron. Different from the youthful face of a curious boy, tempting his professor to speak more plainly, to indulge his own curiosities of the unknown for his own benefit.

_ Except she isn’t just a normal girl, is she?  _ A voice whispered into the back of his mind, right then.  _ She’s beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen before, but she is a  _ **_murderer_ ** _. _

Harry swallowed, shuddering as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.

“Harry?” Riddle cut through his thoughts, and it took him a moment to realize that he hadn’t been paying attention to her at all. Engrossed by the furious beating of his heart and the insidious turn his own thoughts had taken.

“It’s not you, okay?”

_ It’s only the fact that you’re going to become a Dark Lord in the future that has me unsettled at the present moment. _

The words were on the tip of his tongue, threatening to fall, but he held them back. Instead, Harry said—

“You haven’t done anything wrong.”

_ That I can prove at the present moment _ .

Then, as if all life had drained from her body, Riddle stiffened before she pulled back, her gaze intently on his. Her gaze felt as though he was being pulled apart, the flaps of his flesh pried open under her scrutiny, like a scalpel to skin. It was more a dissection than the passing glance of a stranger.

His discomfort increased, his skin crawling with just how intently she looked at him. It didn’t matter that she had pulled completely away from the table. That in that second, she had chosen to give him the space she’d denied him earlier. She sucked all the air from the room, her presence a force that made even breathing a challenging affair.

Her book lied unopened on the desk, and though Harry wanted to comment on this fact, to ask if her purpose for coming over to his table was really to read, he didn’t. He couldn’t when her eyelashes fluttered, and her teeth caught her bottom lip for a fragment of a second.

His eyes caught the motion, the suffocating feeling crawling up his throat winding more tightly around his windpipe. Sure, this was better than her nearness, than the strange sensation that writhed in his stomach when the girl got too close, but her  _ eyes  _ were like a physical touch all on its own.

“Are you afraid of me, Harry?”  

His mouth opened, but no words came. His mind blanked, his cheeks draining completely of whatever color had stained them at the curious note of her voice. It sounded innocuous enough. Harmless with how casual she’d asked the question, but Harry knew better.

“O-of course not! Why would I be? A little intimidated—” Harry wanted to gag at this revelation, but if there was one thing he’d learned, it was that a lie based on true facts was always better than something pulled straight out of his arse. “—but no, I’m not  _ afraid _ of you, Riddle.”

The girl stared at him for some time, her eyes boring into his, before she extricated her hands from the table, pulling along the book she had brought with her.

“I see,” she replied after a long stretch of silence. “I apologize for making you uncomfortable. It wasn’t my intention to do so.”

She walked around the end of the table until she was standing directly to Harry’s right, where his arm was stiff, his hand stuffed into his pocket to hold his wand between clenched fingers. If she noticed this fact, she didn’t comment on it, and neither did Harry. Wanting this interaction to be over as quickly as it had begun, unsettled by the odd expression on her face.

It was a mixture of curious, amused, and some other emotion Harry had never seen on the girl before.

“I don’t blame you for feeling uncomfortable. I certainly can be a bit...intense, as my housemates are fond of saying.”

Harry’s body locked when she leaned down, a hand grasping onto his. The touch burned him, a shock twisting from that single point and outward, spreading like a toxin.

Her smile became warmer, her disappointment melting away to make room for that strange welcoming expression. Harry tried not to cringe, to pull his hand back as if a venomous snake had taken a bite of his hand and was now rearing back for the killing blow.

“But let me tell you a secret,  _ Harry _ ,” Riddle’s voice dropped, the light cadence morphing into something thicker, the lilt almost enough to make his spine quiver, the memory of how her voice sounded when she’d said first said his  _ name  _ flashing along the back of his eyes.

“You  _ fascinate  _ me. There’s just something about you that I can’t quite grasp, like it’s right at the tip of my tongue…”

Harry swallowed, mouth suddenly dry when her hand squeezed his minutely, and her face crept steadily closer until he could smell her breath. A mixture of spearmint, chocolate, and something else...something he couldn’t describe at that moment that flooded his senses.

_ Calm down, Harry. Don’t let her get to you. _

Summoning all the courage Harry possessed, he finally found the wherewithal to pull his hand away from hers, to lean back into his chair and as far away as he could from Riddle’s close proximity. He needed an escape, a way out.

Her presence was sucking all the air from the room, and he needed to bloody  _ breathe. _

“Is it really that strange that I don’t like you like everyone else seems to? That I am not interested in all that rot about pursuing you romantically?” The words came more harshly than he’d intended, but he couldn’t take them back now. She was driving him  _ crazy. _

The girl froze at his words, her brows knitting together in confusion and surprise for a whisper of a second before smoothing over.

Harry nearly laughed at that, her momentary show of weakness enough to remind him that  _ yes _ , this girl would become a Dark Lord in the future, but she wasn’t one at that moment. She was only  _ Tamsin Riddle _ .

“I get it. It’s difficult to be exposed to indifference when everyone else has welcomed you with open arms, but these little mind games you’re playing won’t change this fact.”

Harry squared his shoulders and stood, watching how Riddle pulled away until she was a much safer distance from his person. There was no risk of them touching, of his mouth swallowing the air that passed through her lips.

_ Thank Merlin. _

“In fact, they’ll only make me dislike you,” Harry threw back, taking that moment to pull out his wand and whisper lowly under his breath to vanish his books from the desk. It wasn’t wandless, his skills were not nearly as nuanced as  _ hers  _ during lessons, but it was something.

“I have no problem working with you on this project, but no more than that. We can meet once or twice to check on the project,” Harry stated, grabbing onto the strap of his bag and slinging it over his shoulder.

“But once that’s done, we’re done. You won’t have to deal with me not being in love with your every word and I don’t have to deal with your...fans.”  _ And your damned curiosity. _

The fans were almost more terrifying than she was. They were obsessive, watched him with a careful eye whenever he and she were together in a room. It was as though they wanted to be  _ him _ ...or at least to live vicariously through him.

Harry would gladly give them that role in exchange for his peace of mind. Knowing that a blossoming Dark Lord was interested in  _ him _ , found him fascinating was something out of a nightmare. They could have her, for all he cared.

All Harry wanted was to survive, and perhaps, make her rise to power more difficult than it had been during his time. Even if it didn’t make a difference for his friends in his other universe…

“You’re an anomaly, Harry Evans,” Riddle said after a moment, startling Harry from his thoughts and his single-minded desire to leave the library. They had already talked for longer than he’d wanted.

Her voice was low, no more than a whisper. A hand swept over her hair to smooth the curls into obedience, forcing them back behind her neck.

“But I like you.”

A slow, devious smile curled over her lips. It was playful. Familiar with the way it made her eyes gleam brighter, her skin flush a pleasant rouge on the apple of her cheeks. Harry hardly noticed the slight blush or the fact that she’d trailed her hands from her neck to smooth over the lapels of her uniform, so caught by the words that’d left her mouth.

_ But I like you _ .

Harry wanted to pinch himself to be certain that he wasn’t dreaming. That somehow, he hadn’t knocked himself into a coma rather than into an alternate universe. This didn’t make  _ sense _ .

“W-what?” Harry stammered out, cursing the fact he couldn’t string a sensible sentence to save his life. Though who could blame him really? He dared anyone else to say they would have handled the situation any differently.

“I like you, Harry. I find you refreshing,” she breathed the words out, stepping closer once again, to bridge the gap between their bodies.

Harry didn’t move, caught by the swaying of her hair and the way her eyes sparkled with mirth. Like a dark queen readying herself to knight the newest member of her court, except there was no sword or crown in her hands. No gift to be bestowed, but the gift of her presence. Words and careful gazes, Riddle’s unique kind of praise.

“You don’t worship the very ground I walk on, you do not accept what I say as gospel. Your stubborn personality remains in place even when it is obvious you are no less affected than the others.”

Harry made to protest, to deny this point, but the overwhelming smell of vanilla and jasmine, of dark eyes and pale skin blurring his vision, silenced him. Riddle had cut across the short distance before he could even release a shocked exhale, his spine ramrod stiff with his surprise.

“I would like for us to be on better terms. Perhaps, even friends. I don’t have many if you haven’t noticed already.”

_ What? _

His mouth parted in shock, eyes widening into saucers, uncomprehending.

_ Did she just—? _

It took him longer than he expected to recover. He clamped his mouth shut and tried his best to settle the rapid beating of his heart.

Riddle was watching him, her expression growing more serious. Almost as though she cared for his answer, cared to know if Harry would take her up on this offer of friendship.

“A friend?” Harry repeated, swallowing audibly when her expression did not change. Wishing, at that moment, that the girl wasn’t as close as she was. His neck ached with having to look up to her, cursing the fact that she was so bloody  _ tall _ .

Not that he was necessarily short by any means, he was a solid five foot seven inches. But Riddle was six foot  _ fucking  _ three. Those kinds of genetics were absurd. Sure, he was still growing and would eat up that difference at some point, but this height difference ate at him.

_ Even in a bloody alternate universe, Riddle was taller. _

“Yes, a friend. No more and no less.”

Harry pursed his lips, ignoring the sensation of her eyes boring into his face. He didn’t know if he could trust her on that, if this whole interaction was not some sort of rouse to lull him into complacency.

It wouldn’t be particularly smart on his end to accept this. However...would this not be the perfect opportunity to learn more about Riddle? It would come at a price, of that he was certain, but wasn’t this the in he was looking for? Riddle was a Slytherin, above all. It would cost him something in return to give in to her “request.” There was no doubt that he would have to give something in exchange.

But, how much would he truly be sacrificing? He maintained a relatively low profile throughout his stay thus far, and still, Riddle managed to zero in on his presence. He doubted he would be able to keep himself safely distanced away, even if he rejected her proverbial olive branch. She was already scenting him like a bloodhound, following his every move with the slant of her eyes in the hopes of learning more about him.

No, his best option was simply to accept this for now. Maybe he might even learn more about her in that time, uncover the secrets she hid. Divine her plans and maybe work to undo them when her guard was completely lowered.

It was a risk, but it was just crazy enough that it might work.

“Alright.”

The girl’s brows rose minutely in shock before her surprise smoothed away into a pleased expression. A radiant glow overtook her then, as if Harry had just bestowed upon her best news she’d heard all morning. Harry tried not to react to the show, fingers twitching with his nerves.

_ You can do this, Harry. _

“Are you certain? I don’t wish to force you into anything…” Riddle asked, as if trying to make sure that what she had heard was in fact correct. Harry tried not let himself get cold feet.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

The girl stepped closer to him, and Harry nearly took a step back but he held strong. Her hand lifted to grasp onto his shoulder, a gesture meant to be reassuring. A declaration that Harry had made a great choice.  _ Or _ , a traitorous thought whispered in his head _ , perhaps as a test to determine if you were going to keep your word. _

“I’m glad to hear that, Harry. I promise that you won’t regret your choice.”

At the cajoling tone of her voice and the slight squeeze of his shoulder, Harry wondered if he’d just made a deal with the devil.


	5. Eos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for how long it took to post. Work and school was rather busy this past week. 
> 
> Please leave a comment if you enjoy the story :)

It was approximately three hours since Riddle and he had come to their agreement, and still, he could not get her voice out of his head. It didn’t matter that the morning haze had long since passed or that the halls were now brimming with students, the day only just beginning for them. The girl’s voice still rang in his head, a painful reminder that  _ yes _ , he had in fact signed himself away, and it was only just the beginning of his day.

If only Harry could go about his day as everyone else did. Ignorant and unaware of the danger lurking within its walls, under the guise of a beautiful girl with a soft smile. But he couldn’t, and it was useless mourning this point when he had of his own volition, agreed to the girl’s terms.

Still, he couldn’t believe that it was only 7:30 a.m. That his interaction with Riddle had only been an hour. Harry had assumed it had been longer. The tense moment of him sitting in the same room as her, of her fingers actually touching his, had felt like an eternity. It was amazing just how adrenaline made seconds stretch on for a millennia. 

Now the question was, after going through all that agony, how he planned to survive the rest of the day with the harrowing knowledge that he had to be  _ friends  _ with Riddle?

_ I promise you won’t regret your choice. _

Harry shuddered, a sense of unease blooming within the depths of his soul. It was incredible how even without her present, she still managed to get under his skin.

And that was, perhaps why, he stood in front of the doors to the Great Hall without entering. He’d been idling by the door for minutes now, trying to gather the nerves he’d frayed with his earlier interaction with the girl.

It didn’t matter that he looked like a fool just standing there, or that breakfast was being served. His hunger pains were the least of his worries; the annoying glances of his peers and the professors walking by him, were negligible. If they had a clue of what he had had to deal with earlier, of what a detrimental effect she had on both his physical and mental being, they wouldn’t be laughing at his expense. No one would be giving him a puzzled look with a stupid smirk on their faces if they even had a  _ smidge  _ of the morning he had had.

But they couldn’t know, and that was a terrible truth. 

“Evans?”

Harry jumped, nearly colliding with the door. Cursing under his breath, grateful that he hadn’t smashed his nose into the door and given the entire Hogwarts population another show, Harry turned in the direction the voice had come—

—and groaned when it was none other than  _ Wurren Black _ standing a foot away. If there was a single person more unpleasant to be around than Riddle, it was this git. Just the mere sight of him was enough to irritate him, the bastard’s resemblance to Bellatrix Lestrange and the bitch in the painting back in Grimmauld Place like lighting a fire in his insides.

It was automatic. He couldn’t help that he felt this way.

Harry didn’t know him well, but the rumors about the boy did nothing to endear Harry to him. In fact, the rumors were quite  _ honest  _ about just how  _ charming  _ Wurren was to the general population at the school. He was a blood purist, just as what was to be expected of the Slytherin generation in Riddle’s time and a conniving bastard. He’d done enough to muggle-born girls to warrant him the reputation of  _ arsehole _ . It was only his thick pockets that had, thus far, managed to get him out of most of the messes his prejudice did.

_ Git. _

“Wurren Black. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” The boy stuck out his hand, a pained smile on the boy’s face. 

Harry brows shot up in surprise, unsure of what to do. Black, since Harry’s clandestine transfer to Hogwarts, had shown little desire to interact with him. It was as though Harry did not exist, which had suited Harry just fine. The little interaction Harry had with Bellatrix’s relative, the better. 

_So why now, then?_ Harry wondered. _Why is a Slytherin now interested in interacting with a Gryffindor?_ _Or better yet_ , Harry mused, _since when did a pureblood purist bother with one of questionable origin_? 

As far as Harry knew, Evans was not a common Wizarding surname. He hadn’t bothered to come up with one, more interested in skirting behind the sidelines rather than beneath the critical eye of Riddle’s pawns.

With a tilt of his head, Harry made no move to take his hand, suspicious of the boy’s intentions. There was no telling what Black wanted. There was no reason for him to approach Harry, let alone, attempt to make  _ small talk _ . Taking the boy’s hand, for all Harry knew, could be a mistake. Perhaps, he’d jinxed it? Harry wouldn’t think it past him to try to land Harry into St. Mungo’s for daring to breathe the same air as  _ Tamsin Riddle _ .

“Thank you?” Harry asked, stifling a laugh when Black’s brittle smile waned and he retracted his hand, acting as if he hadn’t been holding it out to Harry for the last three minutes.

“Not very friendly, are you?” Black bit out, something angry flashing in the boy’s eyes. Harry nearly grinned, watching the precise second Black revealed his unpleasant personality before the boy gathered enough sense to rearrange his face into something more inviting.

It was too late for the boy to take it back now, but Harry was not about to comment on Black’s horrid acting skills. It was obvious the boy was trying to be  _ nice  _ for a reason. What that reason was, Harry was certain he’d find out shortly.

“Riddle talks a lot about you.”

Harry froze, the mere mention of her name enough to make his skin crawl. 

“What has she said?” Harry rushed, uncaring of the strange looks they garnered from students entering and leaving the Great Hall. If their inquisitive looks were anything to go by, there would be gossip after this. It was impossible for there not to be, but Harry would worry about that later. At the present moment, none of that mattered. 

If Riddle’s  _ lackeys  _ were getting involved, then Harry needed to be on his toes. What the damned school gossiped about could wait.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” 

Harry grit his teeth at Black’s knowing tone, trying not to scowl when Black’s smile became vicious. 

_ Deep breaths. You’ve survived worse, Harry. You’ve survived  _ Riddle.

“Walk with me, and perhaps, I might share with you a bit of what I know.” Black said, his voice like nails on a chalkboard. Harry would rather chew glass than spend another moment talking to the bastard, but—

If Riddle was  _ saying  _ things about him, it would be in his best interest to know. It could be a good way to uncover more information about her, perhaps, get an in through one of her  _ friends _ —Harry nearly gagged at the use of that word—and figure out what it was that she planned.

_ It couldn’t hurt to at least humor Black. _

“Fine, I’ll bite.” Harry said, inclining his head in a motion to convey that he’d follow. The boy grinned, all teeth, before he turned toward the door and forced the doors open to the dining hall.

Harry was immediately assaulted by the smell of freshly cooked sausage and the loud, bustling sound of conversation. Most of the Gryffindors were seated at their table, as were most of the students from their respective houses. His gaze didn’t linger too long at the Slytherin table, wary of making eye contact with Riddle after he’d just brushed against her earlier that morning.

“After you.” Black said, gesturing toward the Slytherin table with a mocking smile. Harry ignored him, carefully stepping past the bloke and heading to the Slytherin table. Still, he did not focus on their faces, aware that if he chanced upon Riddle’s face, he’d lose his nerve entirely.

_ Wonderful, Harry. Just when you thought you’d had enough of Riddle for one day, here you are. Heading directly into the snake den and straight into her arms... _

The room was chaos around him, but it was nothing compared to the emotions percolating in his head. Anger, frustration, fear, unease, and curiosity all blended together into some unrecognizable mass. Harry wondered if this was even worth it, if satisfying his own curiosity was enough reason to go through this emotional upheaval for a second time that morning.

_ Curiosity kills more than cats… _

Glancing around him, Harry tried not to flinch when he caught sight of curious and surprised eyes from most, if not all, of the students present in the Great Hall. It was one thing to walk to his doom with no one else around to watch the whole thing unfold, but this? To walk straight into a den of snakes with a bloody audience looking straight at him? Waiting, or maybe even anticipating something that Harry was not prepared to deal with? No, he definitely wasn’t. 

_ Forget about them, Harry. None of them matter. It’ll be fine. Just get in and get out. _

If only he could convince himself of this fact.

“I know you must be  _ so  _ very curious.” Black called, startling Harry away from his discomfort and his knowledge of all the eyes boring into his back. He was almost...grateful for that interruption. He doubted he’d be able to gather enough nerve to follow Black to the Slytherin table otherwise. His hands were trembling uncontrollably, and his legs were like jelly beneath him.

“Curious or not, what’s in it for you? Why would you tell me anything anyway?” Harry asked, ears burning when a group of Ravenclaw girls began to giggle and whisper to one another when he passed. It was almost as bad as the time Riddle had humiliated him in front of the entire bloody school with her little show.

“Well, you’ll find out shortly.” 

It was a cryptic and frightening response; and one, that he had not been expecting.

“You know what, I think I would rather not find out—”

“ _ Harry _ , how good of you to accept my invitation.”

Harry’s mouth parted in surprise, his blood first rushing up to his ears and then down to his cheeks when long fingers tickled the nape of his neck. Harry didn’t need to see, to turn his head toward that voice, to know that it was  _ Riddle  _ who had touched him, the tell-tale heat of her fingertips an announcement in and of itself. 

“I was certain that you were not going to accept my invitation to have breakfast at all.”

Harry swallowed, unable to tear his gaze away from the group of Slytherins seated at their table. He should have known that Black’s intentions were foul. Why else would the bloke have talked to him if it wasn’t because his  _ head  _ snake had ordered him to bring Harry over?

_ Fuck. _

Harry was still in a state of shock when Wurren Black stepped past him without sparing him a single glance and reclaimed his seat at the furthest end of the table. Narrowly avoiding, of course, the two empty seats that Harry had missed in his desperate desire to avoid catching Riddle’s eye.

Shoving aside his unease, Harry focused instead on his annoyance and cast the back of Black’s head the dirtiest look he could muster. It was a safer feeling, one that he needed in abundance if he planned to go a second round with Riddle.

“Yea-yeah, I guess we surprised the both of us?” Harry said, shivering when Riddle’s fingers finally pulled away from his neck and settled against the middle of his back. His neck still tingled where she had touched, spreading down his spine in the same fashion her touch had that morning. It was only his robe and shirt preventing her fingers from touching his bare back that kept him level-headed for the moment.

Riddle laughed behind his back, and pushed him toward the empty seats. Harry followed even when he didn’t want to; even when hadn’t planned to sit down for breakfast with the source of all of his strange emotions. Not after barely surviving their last interaction, at least.

“Please, take a seat. You wouldn’t want to go to class without at least having breakfast.” 

Harry only nodded, not trusting himself to speak when, to his utter horror, the chatter in the Great Hall stopped. There were no whispers shared amongst friends. No laughter or the sound of cutlery grinding against plates.

All had fallen still, and Harry didn’t know what to do. Whether he should turn around and make an expeditious exit, or sit down and pretend the entirety of the bloody school wasn’t watching both of them with heated gazes. 

Harry wanted to be sick.

Without allowing Harry a moment to gather his composure, Riddle tightly gripped his left shoulder and steered him to his seat, where she promptly forced him to sit. Harry didn’t think to protest, noticing the mixture of curious and nervous glances from the Slytherins boring into him from all sides. Focusing on that rather than the sound of rustling robes and that all too familiar heat penetrating through the right side of his robes, Harry released a reedy breath.

_ Perfect, just what I needed. Caught between a den of snakes with the greatest serpent of all sitting too close for comfort. _

“Welcome to Slytherin house, Harry.”

He felt far from welcomed. Between the crowd of onlookers at the Ravenclaw table and the Slytherins watching him from over their lashes, Harry wondered if this was how rats felt like when caught beneath the paw of a playful cat. 

“Please make yourself comfortable.”

With a stiff nod, Harry took note of the Slytherins nearest to him. He wasn’t happy that he was there, but at least, he could make the most of it by gathering as much information as he could.

Sitting beside Black, there were two girls that bore a striking resemblance to Bellatrix and even...Mrs. Malfoy? They looked just like Wurren, with their black hair and exceedingly dark eyes.

At Harry’s inspection, one of the girls smiled at him, all teeth. The smile looked everything but friendly. It looked malicious, a cross between maleficent and cruel. Quickly averting his attention, he turned to the other. Unlike her sister, the girl did not smile. Hell, at his curious glance, she didn’t bother to look at him, engrossed with her meal and the low chatter happening further down the table outside of Harry’s hearing range.

If only Riddle could take a page from the girl and ignore him too.

“The girl staring at you now would be Meissa Black.” Riddle whispered into his ear, her lips so close that he could feel each hot exhalation. “She is engaged to Wurren, and that is why they sit beside one another.”

Harry didn’t interrupt, categorizing this bit of information for later use. There was no telling when such an opportunity might come again, especially when it was  _ Riddle herself  _ volunteering this information. He had to take what he could get. 

_ Though _ , Harry thought, careful not to move and accidentally press closer to Riddle,  _ just how far am I willing to go for this? Is this even worth the price of my sanity? Was allowing Riddle to invade my personal space worth it? _

“The other, the one sitting by Wurren’s right, is Deneb Black. She is his youngest sister.” 

The resemblance between them was certainly there. Hell, the resemblance was shared amongst most persons currently sitting at the table. Save for a head of blonde hair that Harry was certain belonged to a member of the Malfoy clan, everyone sitting at the Slytherin table had dark hair and dark eyes.

It was just...strange.

How did one think that marrying one’s  _ cousin  _ was normal? How was this selective inbreeding amongst families good for one’s magic? Hermione had made good mention of how  _ awful  _ this practice was in the long run. Medical deformities, unusual illnesses, and other unsavory things that had made Harry’s stomach turn at the mere mention of them. 

This chase for purity was utter rubbish. Yet, here he was, right at the cusp of it all. Witnessing for himself how generations of families intermarried and later gave birth to future generations that Harry was more familiar with in his lifetime.

“I think I get it.” Harry said after a moment, turning his gaze back down to the empty plate someone must have laid out in front of him when he’d been looking at the Slytherins. He hadn’t eaten. His appetite had died a merciless death the moment Riddle had appeared and practically dragged him into the Slytherin table to introduce him to people he didn’t  _ care  _ to know.

Outside of their names and their relationship to one another, Harry didn’t need to know. What was important was identifying her future knights. And so far, Harry hadn’t met a single one. None of the names or the faces struck a cord of recognition from his days of endlessly pouring over the Pensieve. 

Then again...most of their genders have been completely rearranged. Of course he would have trouble identifying anyone when he didn’t know them by their new names.

“Do you? I could introduce you to others, if you’d like. After all, we  _ are  _ friends, are we not?”

Scrounging what little courage he had, Harry finally turned to Riddle with a nervous glance, unable to ignore her any longer. She had been speaking into his ear since he’d sat at the table, and he’d enough. If he had to feel her lips brush against the shell for another moment, to drown in the warmth spreading from where her body brushed against his...he’d lost his bloody mind.

Having her within his sights did little to relieve his discomfort.

Riddle’s body was facing his, her hair pooling to one side of her shoulder and her hand tucked under her chin. Her eyes were watching him closely, his own face easily reflected in the depths of her eyes with how closely they sat. She resembled more a lazy monarch in that instant than a student. The perfect picture of sophistication and elegance.

She looked out of place sitting inside the rustic walls of the Great Hall. 

“We are. I was just wondering when I would get the time to finally eat some breakfast? Lessons start soon and there are a whole lot of students in Slytherin...” Harry pointed out, noticing the way Riddle’s lips parted before wetting them with her tongue, and how her fingers smoothed over the side of her face. It was a slow and languid movement that looked more and more like a snake waiting for its prey to slip up the longer Harry observed her. He prayed she’d let him be.

“Of course, please feel free to  _ take  _ whatever you like.” Her words came away breathless, and Harry tried hard to not think about Riddle’s added emphasis on the word  _ take _ , choosing instead to enjoy his small victory at being allowed to eat.

Picking up the nearest plate of bacon, Harry scooped pieces of it to his plate, mindful of Riddle’s, and just about the entire Great Hall’s, eyes on him. It made his skin itch, his insides crawl with the close scrutiny everyone was giving him. The Slytherins were no less curious or merciless in their assessment, watching him behind their plates and their utensils as if waiting for something disastrous to happen.

And knowing Harry’s luck, that just might be the case. Nothing ever went well for him, as his little concession earlier that morning revealed. Even after he had tried his best to not give in to Riddle’s demands, in the end, he still did what she wanted.

Then, just as luck would have it, everything went to shit. He supposed it was just that kind of day.

“Are you actually interested in him, Riddle, or are you simply just toying with him?” 

Riddle paused, and Harry nearly dropped his plate. 

_ What? _

Taking a deep breath, Harry turned his head in the direction of that voice, uncertain if he was going to like the revelation. If only he wasn’t curious to see for himself just who dared make such a rude question.

It was a blonde haired girl that had spoken, the one that  _ definitely  _ had to be a Malfoy. She didn’t look to be any older than Riddle, but there was no way for him to tell. Not unless he asked, and at the present moment, there wasn’t anyone in the world that could pay him to speak. Guessing from the collective reactions of everyone at the table, including the boys that had thus far been chattering away, no one was going to speak up either.

“Curious, are you, Alexa?” Riddle said,  her tone full of genuine mirth.

If the table had been silent before, then at the sound of Riddle’s voice, all sound had ceased to exist; become lost to the void and never to return until Riddle herself saw fit to give it existence once again.

“Well, you’ve been chasing after this boy since you’ve been paired with him in Potions. I’m only curious about what your intentions are. After all, you’re  _ eighteen  _ now and you haven’t had a single suitor. In fact, you’ve shown about as much interest in boys as you’ve shown  _ Quidditch _ , which, might I add, is  _ nonexistent. _ ”

Everyone held their collective breaths, including Harry, who watched on with fearful and curious eyes at the oncoming disaster. It was known around the school that Malfoy was a stickler for traditions. Her gossip about marriage and boys was the running trend, and Harry, unfortunately, had been at the end of that vicious tongue more than once already. Though it had always been indirectly, of course. There’d never been enough evidence to show that it was  _ her _ spreading the more vicious rumors. 

Riddle removed her hand from beneath her chin and righted herself in one smooth motion. Her attention flickered to Harry’s face, roving over his features in search of something he could not define, before finally turning to grace the girl with her attention.

“Alexa, I understand that your heart lies in the right place. After your disastrous separation from your suitor in Germany, I know that your intentions are only to ensure that I make a proper decision when I finally pick my beloved.”

Harry dropped his plate. 

Disbelief drained all color from his face and nearly everyone at the table. That was quite a bomb to drop in the middle of the Great Hall. Especially within earshot of the Ravenclaw girls that were notorious for spreading rumors through the school like a wildfire. Just second to Malfoy’s own vicious tongue when she was on the hunt for new blood.

This was...not what Harry had expected. A threat, or some scathing remark, that was what Harry had anticipated would result after such gross disrespect. But then again, would Riddle really threaten a student with him sitting among them? Would she truly compromise her good student persona for someone like Malfoy?

_ No _ , Harry decided. She wouldn’t. There were other ways to humiliate someone in public. And this had to be Riddle’s chosen method. Malfoy’s reputation, considering the politics of the current day in age, was  _ ruined _ beyond repair. Harry didn’t need to be from the 40s to know this fact. His days of listening to inane talk of marriage had finally come in handy.

“I appreciate your kindness. If you’d like, we could discuss this in more detail in  _ private _ . This is quite a delicate subject.”

Malfoy did not respond. No one so much as breathed, the moment divorced from the rules of space and time.

Unable to withstand his own curiosity, Harry turned back to Malfoy. He couldn’t help it. The girl had been speaking animatedly before, seemingly prepared to argue with Riddle in front of an audience. For her to be so quiet now, Harry had to see for himself.

He wished he hadn’t.

Malfoy had gone pale, almost as white as the blonde hair on her head. Her brilliant blue eyes were wide with distress, a look that didn’t fit at all on a girl that had just been humiliated in front of her peers.

She looked...scared. Embarrassed and ashamed, he could understand, but  _ scared? _

“N-no, it’s fine. I’m sorry for getting ahead of myself. We’ve just never seen you so interested in a boy before now and—”

“We?” Riddle interrupted, her tone soft and gentle. 

The girl paled further, her mouth opening and closing in rapid succession. No words came, but Harry could almost imagine the cogs in the back of the girl’s head turning a mile a minute. 

“No need to worry, Alexa.” Riddle laughed good-naturedly, her fingers making their way to Harry’s shoulder to give it a good squeeze. Harry wanted to be sick, exhausted by the stressful energy running between everyone at the table. If this was a typical day in Slytherin, he didn’t want anything to do with it. He wasn’t equipped for these kinds of subtleties. An argument with tensions high and faces red with anger, he was used to, but this psychological warfare was beyond him.

“We can talk about this later. Harry needs to eat his breakfast.”

Right. He was supposed to be eating. He had a long day and starving through most of it would not be fun. Not when he had  _ double  _ Potions with Professor Slughorn...and Riddle.

It’s too bad he’d lost what little appetite he had left after witnessing Malfoy shrink into herself at Riddle’s scrutiny. It wasn’t right, and he  _ knew  _ that it wasn’t. But somehow, even despite telling himself otherwise, he’d lost sight of just how frightening she could be with others.

“Harry? Are you alright?” Tamsin said, her fingers on his shoulders smoothing out to draw lazy circles over the clothed skin. Swallowing, Harry reached for the first thing he saw on his plate, glad that it hadn’t shattered when he’d dropped it. He didn’t want to look back at Riddle’s face or Malfoy’s, knowing that if he’d did, he’d reveal something inadvertently.  

_ Just pretend you didn’t see a thing. _

“Yeah, I’m alright. Just starving.” Harry between clenched teeth before shoving a piece of bacon into his mouth and reaching for more of the food splayed out on the table. He didn’t taste it, preparing his plate with his throat thick with his own apprehension. 

The sooner he got out of that damn den of predators, the better. So he didn’t speak, only prepared his plate and dug in with false vigor. 

All, with Riddle’s attention, focused entirely on him.


	6. Laverna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here you are, the second to last chapter.
> 
> I apologize for any strange grammar things you see. I don't have a beta at this time, and I've always disliked editing.
> 
> Please leave a comment or kudos if you've enjoyed the ride so far.
> 
> Next chapter is going to be interesting. As you all might suspect.

The days that came after were uneventful.

_Thank Merlin for that._

Despite the uneasy glances some of the Slytherins, notably Alexa, threw his way, everything quickly settled into a normalcy that Harry had not anticipated. The students no longer followed him around, their eyes politely turned to their friends whenever Harry entered a room. The girls no longer giggled about him and Riddle, their blushing faces respectfully turned to either the company they were with or their books.

It was as if Riddle’s admonishing statement in the Great Hall had somehow quelled the gossip fever running rampant in the school.

But the thing most notable about this—perhaps, the _best_ thing to come out of the fiasco that morning in his honest opinion—was that Riddle herself had even...become more pleasant to be around. She didn’t push him, didn’t pry into his personal life as he had assumed she would after he’d agreed to her deal. After she’d, in the literal sense, ruined Alexa’s standing in the school, she pulled back almost completely.

It should have concerned him that things could fall so easily into place after that terrifying moment, but Harry did not question it. He still gave her a large berth, careful not to become enthralled with the game she played, but it was easier to maneuver her now. Instead of the overbearing girl he had dealt with at the Slytherin table those weeks before, she had become...nicer. She had softened around him, surprisingly warm and easy to speak to once the whole debilitating intimidation thing wore off.

The change had been alarming. The way she had suddenly given him space, her probing eyes and secretive smiles no longer trained on his every move, enough to make his insides curl. He was ready to admit that it had shaken him, raised his suspicions to an alarming rate that left him tossing and turning in his bed in the same way he had the first few nights he’d landed in the 1940s.

Now though, he wasn’t sure he minded it.

One question still remained, however.

How much of it was an act? Was the girl he’d seen rip into Alexa the same one that would smile at him every morning before turning away, respecting Harry’s space? He couldn’t trust it, _trust her_ , but it was inevitable that he’d grow more comfortable with her in lessons. It was impossible not to.

Not that he didn’t try his damnedest not to.

At first, he’d been adamant about joking and interacting with her for more than necessary. Sure, he did the bare minimum so as not to be seen as an arse by his peers, but that didn’t mean he actually sought her out for human interaction. To laugh with her, to make idle conversation about _something_ of his own volition, was out of the question.

He had balked at the mere idea in the beginning, but rather than be upset as he’d expected Riddle to be, as he had _assumed_ she’d be, Riddle had taken it all in stride. She’d defeated every expectation he’d had of her by accepting him as he was and never asking for more than he could give.

It had left him reeling. Something as selfless and uncharacteristic as that had not even registered as a possibility in his mind until she smiled at him and said herself that she wouldn’t push.

After that, things between them had become more comfortable despite everything urging him not to lower his guard. Not when she took the time to tease out his interests, to ask him questions about his life that did not delve deep into his past. She was observant, but never overbearing. Possessive of him in a way she didn’t seem to be with members of her house or the group of Slytherin girls that always seemed to follow after her, but not so much that it was suffocating.

It was impossible not to like her, and Harry hated how he had come to look forward to their interactions, even if it was only ever in Potions.

She was _Tamsin Riddle_. She was fated to become the most notorious Dark Lord of the 20th Century, and yet, Harry had grown to  _like her_.

She, who would _murder_ , his parents. She who had likely murdered four already, and possibly planned to murder more.

Harry wanted to scream his lungs out in frustration because this wasn’t supposed to happen. It shouldn’t be happening, and yet, he _liked_ her.

Her humor, though cutting, made him laugh. Her observations and her quick ability to rationalize a complex topic, made him think fondly of a witch he had adored in his own timeline. Everything that she did, that she said, eviscerated all the preconceived notions he had of her. And it irked him for her to be this human, to be this _normal_.

She had no right to be.

And yet she was. And _Merlin_ , how unfair that was. Because he knew for certain that if she hadn't been, he wouldn’t feel the way he did. If she had remained as demanding and intrusive as she’d first started off as in their interactions, he doubted he would be nearly as conflicted. Hell, if she was Tom Riddle or even, _Voldemort_ , kind or no, Harry wouldn't be moved in the least.

But she was _not_ Tom Riddle or Voldemort. She was Tamsin Riddle. Neither a serpentine monster nor a dark-eyed boy waiting to murder him in a dark cavern, but a girl. 

She was still dangerous, still a predator in every sense of the word. He couldn't  _unsee_ how she'd crushed Alexa beneath her shoe with just a turn of phrase, but that still didn't stop him from becoming complacent. Now when the predator had disappeared just as quickly as it appeared, leaving instead the soft-spoken young woman that sat beside him now. Harry couldn’t reconcile them.

“Harry, are you alright? You’ve been staring at that blank piece of parchment for thirty-minutes now,” Riddle whispered under her breath, startling Harry from his thoughts. He let out an embarrassed laugh at just how close her face was, noticing that her mouth was pressed into a concerned frown.

It was strange that she looked like she _cared_.

“Sorry, got a little lost in thought. Slughorn isn’t exactly the most interesting professor to listen to,” Harry muttered, bringing a hand up to reposition his glasses, which sat too low on his face, and sweep away the hairs that’d gotten in his eyes. It had been some time since he’d last gotten a trim.

Ironically, since he’d landed in the past. There hadn’t been much time to think about his appearances, not when Riddle ate up most of his waking thoughts.

Riddle smirked at that, a low laugh escaping her lips. Harry’s breath caught, stomach twisting with something that didn’t feel quite like fear. He wondered if he was getting sick, if what he was feeling was—

“You make a good point.”

A hand crept over to where his hand was wrapped loosely around his quill, and he wondered just how this had turned into this. How, in the span of a month or two since they’d made this deal, that Riddle believed it okay to touch him.

It was jarring just how much things had changed between them. He could hardly believe that this was really them, that the girl he was laughing with now about _Slughorn_ was really the same one he’d been wary of in the beginning.

“I imagine it’s even more dreadful now since we’re just about done with the potion as well,” Riddle murmured, her gaze ripping away from his face to give Slughorn her attention.

Harry released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, his hand tingling where her fingers were wound around his. It gave him the opportunity he needed to take in the differences between their palms, to notice how her pale fingers looked starkly white against his darker skin.

_Like a winter queen, or perhaps, a goddess of the underworld if she turned out to be just like that monster in the future._

A shudder rippled through him at the possibility. He didn’t want that to be the case, for Riddle to be who he had first assumed she was. Not when he actually—sort of—enjoyed her company.

_Godric, this was so fucked._

“A pain in the arse is what it is,” Harry complained, shuddering when a finger began to trace circles within his palm.

At Riddle’s sudden laugh, Harry took that moment to pry his hand from hers. The tingling sensation in his palm was almost too much for him to bear when that strange connection spread from his fingers all the way up to his elbow.

“True. Though you’ve just reminded me—”

Harry did not miss the curious edge of her voice. One that he’d grown too familiar with over the past month or so.

“—we need to add the final touches to the potion. Did you manage to acquire the ingredients I asked for?”

...Right, they were supposed to be finishing that potion. It was the whole reason they were still sitting and listening to the walrus-like woman lecture about potion ingredients and the like.

“Yeah, I did. It’s all in my bag if you want them right now?”

There was a long pause where the girl did not say anything. Her attention was completely on Slughorn, and Harry took that as his cue to look up as well, noting that the chatter that had overcome the room had dissipated right as he’d asked his question.

“Class, we are almost at the end of the term. NEWTS are nearly here…” a collective group of students groaned as if choreographed. “...but you shouldn’t lose sight of the project you’ve all been working steadfastly for.”

Slughorn removed her wand from her sleeve, and with a generous wave of her arm and a soft incantation, a bubbling cauldron came into existence right at the center of the empty desk in front of her.

A warm, pleasant smell suddenly flooded Harry’s senses. Familiar in the way it wrapped around him, teased his senses with the promise of sweet affection and comfort. Vanilla and jasmine drowned him, a shock of spearmint caught between the scents into a strange waltz Harry did not attempt to fathom.

It was _intoxicating_ , enough so that his mouth practically watered, tempted to stand and take in more of the smell.

“This here is a modified Amortentia potion two of my most talented students are making. It should be finished within the next coming weeks, as I hope you _all_ are aware is the submission date for this assignment.”

Harry wasn’t listening, no longer interested in what the professor had to say when that smell called to him, _beckoned_ for him to get up from his seat and drink his fill of bubbling liquid he couldn’t see from where he sat.

“ _Harry…”_ A voice murmured too closely to his ear, a hot breath sliding like silk along his skin. Harry shuddered, noticing the faint fragrance just centimeters away, enough to make his teeth ache.

“ _...what do you smell?_ ” That voice murmured once again, something hot grazing against his ear that made his stomach jolt. He was drowning in it, unable to do anything else but lean into that warmth, to press closer and _closer_ until he couldn’t tell where he began and that voice ended.

“V-vanilla and jasmine,” Harry replied, throat tight as he tried to wade through the flurry of emotion. His mind was adrift, lulled into a stupor by that fragrance. Because _Godric_ , it smelled so wonderful. He wanted to drink it in, he wanted to suffocate in that smell, if it meant that he could get _more_.

That voice laughed lowly into his ear, and Harry couldn’t help but suck in a shallow breath, the vibrations of her lips—that was what _something_ was—against his ear nearly undoing him.

“ _Oh, Harry, you’re such a delight.”_

Then, the scent vanished as if it’d never existed. Slughorn had magicked away the cauldron and its contents from the room.

_What?_

Harry blinked, noting that there was an _arm_ wrapped around his waist and something cold nudging along his throat. A something that felt awfully like the tip of a—

“Mr. Evans? Miss Riddle? Is everything alright?”

Harry nearly jumped off his seat, casting a wide-eyed glance to Professor Slughorn. The woman was eyeing him with concern, about to approach when the source of that warmth burning into his side, spoke up, halting Slughorn's movements.

“Everything is perfectly fine, professor. Harry has not been feeling well lately. I will take him to the hospital wing, if that is alright with you?” Riddle asked, a breathless quality to her voice. Harry shot her a confused look, he was feeling just _fine_. Mostly.

“By all means, do what you must. Both you and Mr. Evans are almost finished with your project so it wouldn’t be any trouble at all. I wish you a quick recovery, Mr. Evans.”

Harry had no time to voice his concerns, to tell the woman that he was _fine_ before Riddle was hauling him up by the waist. Harry’s vision swam, sudden nausea sweeping over him.

...Okay, so perhaps, Harry wasn’t well. But how?

Furrowing his brow, Harry tried to recall how he’d ended up in Riddle’s arms. It was like swimming through thick sludge, the memories of these last few minutes out of reach.

There was a cauldron, a pleasant, a soft scent, and then, _nothing_.

Riddle slung her other arm over his shoulder when Harry nearly tripped on both of their bags underneath the table, and carried him toward the exit at the back of the room as if he didn’t weigh a thing.

“What just happened?” Harry asked, vision spinning when Riddle increased her pace, the colors and bright lights in the room making him feel worse. A headache started to form right at the center of his forehead, the ache spreading from that single point and out until his entire head felt swollen and massive on his shoulders.

“You had an adverse reaction to a potion Professor Slughorn was showing the class.”

“Adverse reaction? Just what the bloody hell was in that potion?” Harry complained, bile crawling up his throat when Riddle pressed her weight against the doors of the classroom and flung the double doors open with a wide bang.

Harry shut his eyes, a pained whimper escaping his mouth when the sound cut through his brain. It was like the time he’d had too much fire whiskey when staying over the Weasley’s. They’d snuck out a couple bottles of fire whiskey and stupidly had more than even they could handle.

Mrs. Weasley, the following day, had not been pleased in the least when Ron nor Harry was able to do much the next day, crippled as they were by their terrible hangovers. She’d been livid when she’d found out just what was wrong with them.

Somehow, though, this was infinitely worse than a hangover. At least then, Harry knew what had happened. It had been a choice. A dumb one, as both Mrs. Weasley and Hermione had supplied the following afternoon, but a choice nevertheless. But this was completely different. Harry had been _fine_ mere moments before; there had been no choice whatsoever.

How did the _opening_ of a potion make him want to puke his lungs out? Just by the smell alone? Harry had more than enough experience with a normal type of Amortentia to know that it was a potent potion; Riddle’s tragic background evidence enough of what could happen when the concoction got into the wrong hands. But even still, Harry had _never_ wanted to collapse onto the nearest surface and wait the terrible symptoms out from just _smelling_ a potion.

“It’s our potion. I had added a couple of things I gathered the day before. It seems it wasn’t quite ready for human exposure yet.”

Harry gagged, nearly vomiting over Riddle’s stomach when she made an abrupt turn, heading in the direction of the hospital wing.

“W-watch it,” Harry protested, face growing paler with each step the girl took. She was careful with him, but each rocking movement just made his insides twist in various unpleasant ways. It was like a squirm of insects were hatching in his belly, ready to crawl up his throat and out of his mouth.

“Sorry. Just a little longer and you’ll be able to lay down,” Riddle reassured. Harry begrudgingly relaxed into her arms, trusting, at least, that she’d do as she said even if this was the closest he’d _ever_ been to her. It was strange...how easily he could let himself sink into it. It should _terrify_ him, should be far more uncomfortable than it actually was.

But he wasn’t. His fight or flight reflex was oddly silent, his mind still hazy.

Harry decided right then and there that the next time Professor Slughorn decided to play show and fucking tell with the class, he’d cover his face up.

 _Fantastic._ Harry thought, lips screwing into a line when another wave of nausea swept through him. This wasn’t how he’d planned to spend the next few hours of his. He had somewhere to be, a somewhere that involved Riddle and her... _friends_.

After weeks of sitting around on his arse, just when he’d about given up on catching Riddle in a lie, he’d learned that Riddle planned to meet with a group of Slytherin boys and girls later that evening. For what and with _who_ exactly, Harry didn’t know. The details hadn’t mattered at the time, not when Harry had planned to be there to find out.

Their relationship may have improved dramatically since their agreement, really, but that didn’t change just who she was, who she _could_ become. Keeping an eye on Riddle was still in his best interest, even if his attention did at times linger too long Riddle’s face and her smi—

Another wave of vertigo overtook him, and Harry shoved Riddle aside, unable to contain the bile burning in his esophagus any longer. He vomited his breakfast all over the stone floor. The splatter echoed in the empty hallway, but Harry could only hear the rapid beating of his heart and the rush of his blood in his ears.

“Harry?”

Riddle’s voice sounded far away. Harry shook his head to alert her that he was _fine_ , and would be fine after a moment. He just needed some space, a moment to collect his thoughts.

His knees shook beneath him, threatening to collapse underneath his weight at any moment, but he couldn’t let Riddle touch him. No, it was...not _right_.

This, whatever this was becoming, had to stop. A version of her had _killed_ Harry’s parents, a version of her had gone off on a _rampage_ and murdered innocent muggles. She wasn’t an innocent girl, and would _never_ be.

The kindness was fake. It was all an act for him to lower his guard, and he had to remember that. It was _her_ potion that had made him this way, not his or anyone's. She had said that she put in new ingredients, after all. What if that had been intentional? What if all of this had been to lure Harry away from the class—

_Like a spider waiting for its meal to fall right into its web._

When Harry finished sputtering, he lifted his head to look at her through his lashes.

She was standing a short distance away, her hair pulled back behind her neck. Her robes were impeccable, the color of her white oxford poking over the top of her robes despite him shoving her off him earlier.

She looked unruffled. As if she hadn’t broken a sweat when carrying Harry down from the dungeons and up through the hallway, or particularly bothered by Harry’s rough handling. Harry glanced behind her, mouth parting in surprise. They weren’t too far from the hospital wing. How was that possible?

He could have sworn their walk had lasted only a minute. Had it really been that long? Had Harry been _conscious_ that entire walk?

“Better?” Riddle asked, and Harry nodded in agreement. He was slightly better. His vision was no longer dark around the corners, and his stomach no longer felt like it was about to crawl up his esophagus. Thank Merlin for that.

Then, Riddle began walking toward him.

Harry tensed, lifting a hand up to tell her silently to stay the hell away from him.

“Don’t come any closer,” Harry said, voice shaky. She paused, her head tilting to one side in confusion. It was similar to how a cat watched a caged bird. “I’ll get sick all over you if you do.”

Harry’s heart was beating a mile a minute, his awareness of their solitude and his weakened state almost enough to make him throw up a second time. His hands were trembling, sweaty with his nerves, and Harry tried to no avail to stop them from shaking.

“You won’t make it to the hospital wing without my help, Harry,” she said, taking another step toward him.

Harry held still in spite of the spike of adrenaline that rushed up his veins, suddenly consumed by the fear that she might do something to him now that they were alone, away from the prying eyes of his professors and peers.

“I-I’m sure I can manage,” Harry insisted, eyeing how Riddle’s lips pursed into an impatient line. Clearly, she was annoyed with Harry’s antics.

_Tough shit._

“ _No_ , you most certainly cannot. You can barely stand. What has gotten into you?”

 _You_ , Harry wanted to say, _you have gotten into me_.

Harry knew what she was doing.

How had Harry failed to notice? Failed to see that she was burrowing beneath his chest, eroding his guard with each passing day? It was a slow, slow game Riddle was playing, and Harry had just let her, had known what she was doing, suspected it from the moment she’d retracted her more aggressive advances.

_How did I not see?_

When all along, from the moment he’d been saddled to Riddle for Potions, that Riddle had been leading him to this point? From the ruse of a well-intentioned friend to the adverse reaction from that bloody potion?

Riddle sighed, then righted herself, a look of disappointment flashing over her face.

“Friends _help_ each other, Harry. I am only trying to do what is best for you as a friend.”

Harry’s lips pursed. Friends helped each other out, but they were most certainly _not_ friends. They could laugh and joke around, and perhaps, occasionally brush their hands against one another when caught up in the moment, but this prolonged exposure was too much.

 _No_ , they weren’t friends. Harry was only doing what he needed to do to _survive._ That was the whole reason he had given into her in the first place, had agreed to their stupid deal. He had made himself perfectly clear that this impasse was only temporary.

Harry didn’t owe her anything.

... _but will you be able to make it on your own, Harry? Will you get to the matron before you puke all over the hallway and collapse into your vomit?_

Everyone was in class. No one with the exception of Riddle and Harry were out this way. No one would come out to pick him up from the ground until lessons were over, and they had double potions today. He’d be lying on the ground for _hours_ , potentially.

_Damn it._

Harry didn’t want to concede this. He didn’t want her to...touch him anymore. It made his skin feel strange, tapping into that strange connection that _shouldn’t_ exist. In this time, Riddle had more of a soul than she’d had in any of the instances he'd seen Voldemort or Tom. He hated this, hated how it muddied the waters, complicated their already complicated relationship.

This situation would be easier to bear through if his skin didn’t tingle at the lightest brush of skin against skin.

Still.

It would be insane to refuse her help. It would take them back to square one in their arrangement if he threw a fit right then and there, out him if he wasn’t capable of pretending to trust her this late in the game. He had no reason to be wary of her, especially _now_. He wasn’t supposed to know about the skeletons underneath her bed or her little rendezvous with her housemates in the dead of night.

“...You’re right. I’m sorry. The potion is doing some strange things to me,” Harry said, the half-lie falling easily from his lips. It had, indeed, done some strange things to him. There was nothing wrong with bending the truth when Riddle herself had nearly tricked him after he’d tried his hardest not to be swayed.

“It’s alright, Harry. I don’t blame you for your reaction. The potion we are brewing is a strong one, and I will admit that I am still unfamiliar with its effects at the present time. I won’t know for certain until we add the ingredients you left behind in class.”

It didn’t take long for Riddle to reach him after he’d given her the green light. She slung his outstretched arm over the top of her shoulder and wrapped a sturdy, but soft arm around his waist. It took all of his willpower and more not to recoil from her touch, her warmth and the strange stirring of their soul connection making his stomach turn.

“Y-you have to tell me more about this potion, Riddle,” Harry said, casting a wary glance in Riddle’s direction when she remained silent for a solid minute after his statement. Harry was convinced she wasn’t going to answer, but then, she stopped and tilted her head just so.

Her hair tickled the nape of his neck, and Harry shuddered, hyper-aware of their proximity now that he wasn’t drunk on that potion and vomiting all over the place.

“I’ve got a better idea—” Riddle said, her tone indescribable.

Harry’s blood went cold when she leaned in closer, her lips so close to his ear that they grazed the skin.

“How about I show you?”


	7. Dionaea Muscipula

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I said this would be the last chapter. I lied. Still, all of the tags become applicable here.
> 
> Thank you mith for helping me with this lengthy chapter. You are incredible for taking this on.
> 
> Leave a comment if you enjoyed the chapter!
> 
> (The next one will be the last, for reals)

Swallowing, Harry tried not to let his unease show. 

There was something about the situation that felt  _ wrong _ . Everything from Riddle’s sudden invasion of space to the way her eyes sparkled with barely hidden amusement made his skin crawl. 

He had half a mind to tell her to go fuck herself right then, but he didn’t. His body was still too sluggish, his legs barely keeping themselves straight from the debilitating effects of that potion. He needed Riddle to carry him, and so, rather than rejecting her suggestion to  _ show  _ him the potion, he nodded.

Harry hoped he didn’t live to regret this.

“Good. It is fortunately not too far from the hospital wing,” Riddle murmured once again into his ear before setting off, her grip on his waist and shoulders, steadfast as they began to head down the hall. 

Harry ignored the way her body pressed into him with each step she took, her warmth slowly seeping through his robes. 

“Wait—” Harry started, realizing a moment after they’d started moving that the room Riddle had taken to brewing their potion was not in the dungeons. Normally, Slytherins tended to brew nearer to their common room, the convenience easily surpassing their need for privacy. It wasn’t surprising that Riddle had elected on keeping her movements secret, but still, it made him pause, more concerned about reaching their destination. “You’ve been brewing the potion up here?”

Riddle didn’t stop walking when she answered.

“Of course. Do you think I could get any work done if I remained there with everyone approaching me for assistance? My...popularity is inconvenient.”

Harry tilted his head, noticing that they’d passed the double-doors to the Hospital Wing and were now heading deeper into the castle. 

“Personally, projects are best done on the upper floors. Everyone is too engrossed in their own lives to bother with me.”

Harry nodded, not believing a word she said. It...sort of made sense?

“You don’t seem convinced,” Riddle whispered into his ear, her hot breath fanning over the nape of his neck. He hated when she did that.

Harry made to reply, ready to tell her just that, when Riddle’s grip tightened, cutting him off.

A whisper of unease shot through him when Riddle’s pace began to slow. They were nearing their destination and Harry wondered if this was it, if this would be the moment he’d see for himself the monster hiding behind her pretty face.

“So when I am not where I am expected to be, well— ”Riddle trailed off, her movements tapering off as well. Harry’s head spun, his stomach churning from both the potion and his own tumultuous emotions when Riddle’s lips were once more by his ear, the sharp scent of jasmine and vanilla invading his nostrils.

_ Jasmine and vanilla... _ where had he smelled that before?

“—It leaves me with plenty of time to pursue my  _ interests _ .”

Harry sucked in a shuddering breath when Riddle hauled him from the corridor and through a doorway that he hadn’t had time to notice. He struggled in her grip, adrenaline pumping through his veins when she laughed at him—sharp and all  _ wrong. _

There was nothing sweet about it, unlike even the low purr of her voice when she’d first spoke to him in Potions. 

Then, he was falling. She’d let him go and he dropped hard, his forearms scraping against the stone beneath him and his knees vibrating with pain when they made impact with the floor. 

“And my, are you an interesting boy, Harry,” Riddle said once her laughter subsided, the sound of her footsteps echoing in the room they’d entered. Harry lifted his head, nausea, and fear near choking as he tried to make sense of where he was, eyeing the cobwebs and desks in the unused classroom.

Harry couldn’t even remember being in this room in the future, and that alone spurred him to get up, to do  _ something  _ other than lay there on the floor like some terrified animal.

“So what? You’re just going to throw me into abandoned classrooms because you have nothing better to do with your time?” Harry hissed, twisting around from the floor and forcing himself to his feet despite the way the world spun around him. 

The potion was still wreaking havoc on his senses and he wanted it to  _ stop _ . He needed it to if he was going to make it out alive. 

Riddle was no longer playing, no longer pretending to be who she was. And that was more frightening than any little game of pretend he had ever had to suffer in his own time.

“Oh,  _ Harry _ —” Riddle said, both fond and delighted all at once. Harry shuddered at the way her lips curled into a grin, her fingers crawling to her hair to sweep the fringe that had fallen out of her rigid hairstyle. “—you don’t get it, do you?”

Harry didn’t say anything for a moment, his hand reaching for the familiar weight of his wand in his pocket. 

“I wouldn’t try that if I were you. Not in your current state. We wouldn’t want any...accidents,” Riddle supplied, her smile only making Harry more nervous than he was already. She looked too smug, too self-assured in that moment. He didn’t like it.

“Wouldn’t try what?” Harry played dumb, flinching when Riddle tutted and shook her head at him, her smile still in place. 

_ That isn’t creepy at all, no sir. _

“I know your wand is in your left pocket. I know you want to reach for it.”

Swearing, Harry went for it anyway, having one second to watch Riddle lunge from where she stood in the classroom.

“ _ Stupefy! _ ” 

Adrenaline surged through him, cutting through the haze. 

Harry ran, darting away from Riddle’s reach when his spell missed, burning into the wall right by Riddle’s head. 

“It is always the hard way with you boys.” Riddle sounded disappointed, but not at all surprised. Harry didn’t give a shite about what she thought.

He flung another curse, sweat gathering over his brow when she swiped at him, her fingers skimming over his cheek. That had been  _ too  _ fucking close.

She mirrored his movements in the classroom, the only sign that she was as affected as he was, the prominent flush on her cheeks and the gleam of sweat gather on her forehead.

“Stay the hell away from me!” Harry was shouted, hoping that someone might hear them. “I’m not afraid to curse you.”

Riddle’s laughter answered him, her dark eyes flashing with amusement...and something else. Something that Harry didn’t want to acknowledge, didn’t want to think about because they were in the middle of a  _ scuffle _ , one that was potentially life and—

A snap sounded behind him, and Harry had one moment to brace himself before he was falling backward, his wand flying from out of his slackening hand.

_ No. _

Riddle was on him in seconds, her knees pressing onto his thighs, her hand darting out to wrap around his neck and squeeze until his breaths halted. His vision instantly darkened from the lack of oxygen.

“Are we done?” Riddle said, but Harry wasn’t listening, scratching at her arm with blunt nails and wriggling beneath her to get free. His vision was coming and going, his glasses askew on his face as he tried not to give in. “No?”

She was strong, stronger than she looked with her soft skin and her smooth hair. It was disconcerting,  _ terrifying  _ in the way most men found seemingly harmless things scary.

“Harry, Harry,  _ Harry— _ ” Riddle mocked, her face nearing his. Harry made out the black of her irises, the pink of her lips, and the flush of her cheeks before his vision went out completely. The scent of vanilla and jasmine, the taste of metal and fear thick in his throat. “How is it that the one that sees me the most is also the most blind?”

A croak was all Harry was able to manage, her grip on his throat unyielding even as he was straddling that precarious edge, ready to fall into unconsciousness if she didn’t let him go. 

“I gave you so many opportunities, so many  _ chances _ , and yet, here you are. My fingers depriving you of your precious air, for what? It could have been so much easier, simpler.”

Harry tried to shake his head, tears burning in the corners of his eyes from suffocation, but he couldn’t. His limbs after seconds of furious struggling had fallen to his sides, no better than dead weight. 

“And now, it is only you and I. In this room with no one to come to your rescue.” 

Riddle’s fingers loosened slightly, and Harry choked, desperately sucking in air. He didn’t care that he looked pathetic, gulping down as much oxygen as he could before she thought to deny him again.

_ Merlin. _

She was insane. Completely unhinged, and nothing proved this as much as the almost bored expression she now wore, her lips no longer smiling, no longer  _ amused _ .

“You can scream all you like. We’ve already established how...rude you are.” 

Fear twisted in his stomach when the gravity of the situation sank in. 

He was wandless, pinned down with a mad woman hunched over him, her hand hovering over his throat as if daring him to provoke her again.

If only his mouth and his brain weren’t so disconnected.

“ _ Rude _ ?” Harry repeated, his throat on fire. It hurt to speak, but still, he pushed on, unable to let things lie like this. He wasn’t about to make this easy for her—whatever  _ this  _ even was. “You fucking shoved me into a classroom and lunged for me? Then you  _ choked  _ me? If anyone here is rude, it’s—”

“ _ Shut up. _ ”

Harry clamped up immediately, flinching at the threatening hiss of her voice and how she pressed closer, her lips near enough to his that he could practically taste the hot chocolate she’d had that morning.

“I’m only going to ask you this once, so listen closely—” Riddle started, her voice so soft that Harry almost missed it over the sound of his own harsh breathing.“—do not test my patience, or I assure you that a bruise around your pretty little neck will be the least of your concerns.”

The seconds dragged for what felt like an eternity where neither of them spoke, Harry’s panting and Riddle’s soft threat still ringing in the room. 

Then, Harry nodded. It was a slow tilt, but it was one that he knew Riddle would see.

She relaxed above him, though slightly, and her grip around his neck slackened completely until it was just a light press of her fingers on his throat. 

He relaxed too despite himself, shifting on the floor to ease the ache over his shoulder blades and arse from landing as hard as he had. He tried not to make any sudden moves, not wanting to be choked a second time—or worse.

For now, he’d comply. There wasn’t much he could do with his wand out of reach.

“What do you want?” Harry croaked, fingers curling into fists when Riddle raised one brow at him, her head tilted to one side to regard him more closely.

“Why? Isn’t it obvious?” Riddle replied, mischief alighting over her features. It was singlehandedly the most terrifying thing Harry had ever seen given his situation. 

_ No _ , Harry wanted to say but didn’t. He was tongue-tied, frozen with discomfort when Riddle leaned in until her lips skimmed his, and a soft tongue licked the corner of his panting mouth. 

She pulled back after a second, licking her bottom lip as if savoring the taste of his mouth.

Harry closed his eyes for a second, sucking in a deep breath because this wasn’t  _ happening.  _ This wasn’t—

This wasn’t  _ fucking  _ happening. He had to have been knocked out cold, suffering through some bloody nightmare because this couldn’t possibly be real.

Her fingers slid down his throat, her index finger tracing along the collar of his shirt with something akin to fascination. Harry pushed into the floor below him, hoping that he could melt through it and that he could disappear. His face was on fire, his  _ skin  _ was crawling in a way that he had never experienced before.

_ Why is this happening?  _ What  _ is even happening?” _

“I want you—” Riddle said, a blunt nail digging into his skin before she pulled the collar of his shirt down to bare more of him to her gaze. Her dark eyes had gone stormy, the flush of her cheeks more pronounced, more obscene the longer this went on. “— _ all _ of you.”

Harry shifted beneath her, hands raising up to push her away.

“None of that now, there’s no need to be afraid.”

His limbs froze, his hands hovering just centimeters from Riddle’s shoulders. There was something forcing him still, muting the panic in his gut. It was worse than the haze of that potion.

“I will not hurt you, Harry,” Riddle purred, and Harry blanched, noting with dread how his limbs were forced back down to his sides, pinned to the cold floor. “You’ve no idea how valuable you are.”

Harry’s world was spinning.

His chest constricted with panic, his thoughts racing a mile a minute. Everything about this was wrong, so  _ fucking  _ wrong. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe when Riddle was sucking up all the air in the room. 

She was looming over him, her hair curtaining their faces from the cool air of the empty classroom. Her eyes were trained on his, eating him alive, consuming him in the same fashion Harry imagined a wild beast devoured its prey.

Except Riddle wasn’t some monstrous creature. She was a girl, with soft skin and long lashes. She was feminine and beautiful, aware of just how easily she could sway another into seeing her view.

“Yo-you choked me,” Harry whispered, skin prickling when Riddle paused in her movements to look at him, eyes curious.

“After you had drawn your wand and cast the first spell.” 

Riddle pulled her hand away from his chest, reaching for something in her pocket. 

Harry didn’t need to see it to know what it would be.

Within seconds, Riddle was pulling her wand from the sleeve of her robe and pressing it to Harry’s neck. The wood was ice-cold and Harry shuddered as Riddle drew circles against the skin, applying slight pressure when she twisted her wrist to tug on the collar of his shirt. 

“Violence begets violence, Harry,” Riddle said, the end of the wand digging uncomfortably over his chest. “If you attempt to harm me, I am not above defending myself.”

The sound of tearing cloth echoed in the room.

“Wha-what are you doing?” Harry hated that he stuttered through his words, that his ears were bright red with embarrassment when Riddle began to cut down his chest with her wand, baring more and more of his skin.

“Undressing you,” Riddle replied, and Harry choked on his spit at how casual she sounded. As if she were talking about the weather rather than, quite literally, getting him naked.

That stirred Harry into action, struggling now against the invisible binds keeping him pinned to the floor. There was no way in  _ hell _ he was going to allow this. She could threaten him, choke him, cut him, or whatever it was that she did, but this was going too far. 

“What the fuck? You can’t just—” Harry’s protest was quickly cut off by the sound of more tearing, the wand tip now hovering at the waistband of his trousers. 

A blush was burning against his cheeks, spreading from the skin of his neck and down to his chest.

“But I am.”

Riddle’s smile was wide and devastating, and Harry could only watch as her wand skirted over the button of his trousers for a moment, as if relishing in the anticipation.

Harry wanted to crawl into a hole, to hide away because this was the first he would ever—

“Why?”

The sound of ripping cloth filled the air. 

Harry flinched, gooseflesh prickling over his body as cold air hit sensitive skin. Riddle had cut a slit down his boxers.

“You’re not listening.”

Riddle shook her head, her hand coming up to card through her hair before dropping to the collar of her own blouse, undoing the buttons one by one. 

Harry tried not to stare, but he couldn’t look away. With each subtle twist of her fingers, she bared more of that pale flesh that he’d often seen peeking from beneath the collar of her shirt when he most  _ certainly  _ wasn’t staring at her.

Riddle paused to look at him, a slow smile creeping up her face. 

“Like what you see?”

Harry blushed and Riddle laughed, her fingers renewing their task.

“I-no, I don’t.”

She didn’t stop until her robes were cast aside.

“No need to deny it, I know you find me attractive.”

The retort died on Harry’s tongue when he realized just what Riddle was wearing beneath the robe.

Clearing his throat, Harry tried to erase the image from his head, to calm the sudden twisting in his belly. 

Riddle’s Oxford was open down the middle, something white poking from beneath the thick material. Her skirt was riding up her legs, a peak of something lacy strapped to the tops of her thighs, nearer to wear her legs parted over his. 

Harry had no idea what these articles were, what to make of them, but if he knew enough about female underclothes from back in his time, which wasn’t  _ much _ to begin with, then—

Those were Riddle’s underclothes. 

“Much better, don’t you agree?” Riddle asked, snapping Harry out of his unwanted trance. 

“No, definitely not. This is—” Harry was fumbling now, unable to get the words out when Riddle was shrugging the oxford from her pale shoulders, exposing more of herself to his gaze. 

He hated that he was staring, drinking her in despite the natural fear thrumming in his veins. This was a predator, after all. A beast in the skin of a young woman that waited for helpless idiots just like him to fall into her grasp.

And how stupid he had been to believe that she was just a misunderstood girl dealt the wrong hand. 

Once Riddle shrugged off her shirt, her fingers went to work on her skirt, unbuttoning it with surprising dexterity despite using one hand, and worked the fabric down her legs. 

Harry’s mouth went dry when Riddle took that moment to stand above him, to let the skirt pool to the floor at their feet. It made his insides curl, a heat he never expected crawl over his skin when Riddle didn’t resume her place on his legs but stepped closer.

She didn’t stop until she was standing over Harry’s face, her ankles at either side of his head. 

But Harry wasn’t paying attention to where her legs went. No, he was fixated on the long see-through socks covering her legs, pinned to some strange piece of cloth tied to her waist. Her underwear, higher than what he remembered female underwear had looked in his time from what he could recall from old magazines, sat between her socks and that wrap.

“Is this everything you imagined it would be?” I know what thoughts you’ve had racing through your mind from the moment I first met you.”

Harry made to deny it, pushing against the force still keeping him pressed to the floor, but nothing came. Then Riddle’s wand was out, swishing in the air, and his torn clothes vanished from existence.

“I apologize for my impatience. I had planned to undress you with my hands, but alas, the look on your face has... _ forced  _ my hand.” Riddle’s voice dropped to a silky drawl, and Harry only had one moment to gasp, to brace himself for her, before she set aside her wand, and he was up, something forcing his upper body up until he was staring straight at Riddle’s thighs.

_ Thighs as white as snow with a light dusting of hair that he could only see because of their close proximity. _

A hand was carding through his hair, gentle yet firm, coaxing him closer, to press his mouth against her thigh, and Harry didn’t think to resist. His mouth opened in surprise, tongue poking out to taste the covered skin when a familiar scent consumed him.

_ Jasmine and vanilla… _

Harry moaned when his mouth touched her, the taste better than he’d anticipated. His head was swimming with the smells, the low thrum of their soul connection crashing down around his senses. 

Through layers of clothes, it was so easier to bear. He could ignore it, resist it, but now, against all rational thought he was sucking on her thighs, giving into urges that he’d forced into the back of his mind. 

“Yes, that’s it.” Riddle crooned, her hand pulling on his hair harder, tighter; the sting of it doing nothing to quell the heat swimming in his stomach. 

_ Merlin, what is wrong with me? _

“Take your fill. You must be  _ parched _ , sweetheart.”

Harry didn’t respond, instead sucking harder onto her skin, tongue laving over a warm thigh before turning his attention to the other, Riddle’s hand guiding him through it. She was patient, even when she’d professed that she couldn’t stand another moment without stripping Harry bare, but he wasn’t about to stop.

There was no fighting this, his head was drowning, suffocating in that sweet smell that curled around him, that made his cock strain, thick and heavy between his legs. 

“How much do you want me, Harry?” Riddle asked, pulling Harry back and away from her when he didn’t stop tasting. Blearily, he turned his attention to her, devouring her with his gaze with the same intensity she did him. 

“Answer me,” Riddle pulled harder, and Harry whined, his scalp stinging from Riddle’s roughness. “I will not ask again.”

Swallowing, Harry tried to gather his composure, to say the words that he  _ knew  _ he shouldn’t say. But god, it was so hard. His insides were on fire, his cock swollen between his legs. 

There was a voice whispering for him to keep going, to please her. It was a voice he’d only heard in his dreams and nightmares, a voice he’d thought he’d left behind when he traveled from the future to the past. 

_ Don’t you want her, Harry? You know she will punish you, starve you if you do not please her? Don’t you  _ want  _ to please her? _

“I-I,” Harry tried, but the sentences were jumbled in his head. The voice was still whispering, demanding he indulge her, to take everything that she had to offer. 

It was only when Riddle’s grip tightened, her face twisting into something equal parts impatient and displeased that Harry finally caved, head swimming with this voice.

“I want-want you,” Harry gasped, screwing his eyes together in deep consternation. This...was wrong. So wrong, and he  _ knew  _ that but—

He didn’t know why he wanted to say this, to  _ please  _ her. It shouldn’t be this tempting considering who she  _ was _ .

_ Merlin, what am I doing? _

Harry had no time to question it.

Riddle forced him down onto his back, her thighs at either side of his head as they pressed against his face. He swallowed, salivating when the scent of jasmine and vanilla flooded him, the source of it coming directly from between her thighs. 

“Then be a good boy and show me just how much you do.”

Riddle parted her legs, her fingers sliding from the center of her chest and down to cup between her legs. Harry’s head was spinning with her motions, taking in the way her other hand slid somewhere behind her, and an audible click thundered throughout the room.

“I-er,” Harry was tongue tied, mouth open with surprise despite everything willing him to close it, to click his jaw shut because he couldn’t  _ possibly _ be doing this.

Riddle’s hand slipped between her legs to push aside her underwear, and then she was pressing closer, her—

“Open your mouth,” Riddle ordered, her voice gentle yet demanding. “Show me how desperately you crave me. This is your chance.”

Jasmine and vanilla overwhelmed his senses, drowning out all rational thought. Harry pressed his mouth to the soft skin of her thigh like a man starving, his tongue running over the nylon. Her taste consumed him, the way fire charred paper, and his eyes closed, the sound of her pleased hum making gooseflesh ripple over the nape of his neck.

“Higher,” she ordered, a hand suddenly in his hair, yanking him from her knee to her inner thigh, stopping only at the corner of where leg met hip.

_ There _ , a voice whispered in his head.  _ There _ .

Harry opened his eyes until they were half-lidded, weighed down by her taste and the imposing hand on the back of his head.

There was drool dribbling down his chin, but Harry paid it little mind, choosing instead to kiss along that exposed skin, staring at the thin thatch of hair between her legs. 

“That’s it, pretty boy,” Riddle purred, her fingers scratching at the back of his head as he took more and more of her into his mouth, leaving glistening trails of saliva against pale flesh. “Show me just how much you  _ desire  _ me.”

Harry couldn’t get enough of her, even when her weight pinned his wrists and ankles to the floor. 

Riddle’s hand pulled him closer, easing the strain in his abdominal muscles, and then his mouth was kissing between her legs, his tongue poking out to taste the dewy wetness between her thighs. 

At Riddle’s soft exhalation, Harry opened his mouth wider, the flat of his tongue licking up and back down in rhythmic motions. The sound of his mouth touching her opening echoed in the silent room, the slick  _ squish  _ of it making his insides writhe with excitement. It silenced the fearful voicing crying out for him to stop, to  _ see  _ reason.

Because why should he be afraid of this? Why should he be afraid of her when with each sharp breath and soft curse, Harry’s heart thundered in his chest?

_ How could this be wrong? _

Before Harry could taste more, savor more, dig into her flesh and never come out, Riddle’s hand tightened against his hair and yanked back. His mouth fell away with a whine, his lips still wet and slick with her juices.

He licked at them, unsatisfied when it wasn’t enough.

“ _ Harry… _ ”

Harry's eyes looked up at the sound of his name, trailing from the wetness between her legs to the curve of her stomach, and higher still, zeroing in on how Riddle’s fingers slipped beneath the strap of her bra as she slowly shrugged the silky material off. 

His mouth had dried up. Words became lost. 

This was the first time he’d ever seen a girl like this, and it was unlike anything he could have ever anticipated.

Riddle when completely dressed was a terrifying sight. Beautiful and intimidating, like most magical creatures that lurked in the shadows of the forbidden forest.

But  _ naked _ , Harry didn’t know what to think.

“You’re looking a little flushed. Are you alright, Evans?” 

A coy smile twisted over her lips when Harry swallowed, a strange thrum twisting within his belly. 

“Or would you prefer  _ Potter _ ?”

Everything stopped.

Harry gasped, the sound caught between terrified and relieved when Riddle pulled back, entirely naked to survey him. The playful mischief had disappeared from her features—leaving cold and unfathomable black in the depths of her eyes.

It stripped him bare, and Harry wanted to cover himself up, to pull back the vestiges of his sanity and dignity.

His mouth tasted funny, his lips stung. The seconds leading up to this moment were hazy, so far away that it was miraculous it had only been seconds. 

He remembered the scent of vanilla and jasmine. The weight of those twin scents settling deep into his bones, and then, he was floating. Drowning and scratching at his skin with need, to taste and to melt all at once.

And then—

_ And then— _

His memories flooded back. The fresh taste of her flesh, the sweet tang of her sex, the sensation of her smooth skin against his lips, of the hairs of her  _ cunt  _ tickling his nose—

“How-how long have you  _ known _ ?” Harry choked out, but Riddle ignored him, choosing instead to step away from him, to smooth her fingers through her hair in a fashion so similar to the Tom Riddle from the pensieve that it made Harry’s stomach clench.

Her hair fell away from its bindings, pooling down her shoulders and lower still until they brushed her hip bone. It was like shadows, dark tendrils curling around her body in a loving embrace that made Harry all the more aware of how bizarre this situation was.

_ Or would you prefer Potter? _

Harry wanted to throw up.

Riddle smiled, all teeth, flicking her hair back before plucking her wand—the wood manifesting from out of thin air, caught between her slim fingers—to spin it within her grip. She looked demonic—a terrifying sight even while adorned with lacy white panties and stockings.

“From the moment you first looked into my eyes.”

Horror engulfed him when Riddle dropped, her knees at either side of his hips. It was a fluid motion, almost as if she’d practiced the move hundreds of times in the privacy of her own dorms. 

She trailed her wand over his quivering stomach, a sly smile on her lips when Harry shut his eyes, when he tried to pretend that this wasn’t happening, that she hadn’t known this from the  _ beginning _ .

“I must commend you. You played the role quite well for one so young.”

Harry bit his lip to stop it from trembling. The wand tip poked into his belly button, featherlight and harmless.

But there was nothing  _ harmless  _ about Riddle.

“You had me, for a time, completely fooled. Downplaying you capabilities, pretending to be cattle like all the others in this  _ school _ ,” Riddle continued, her voice dropping to a murmur the closer she crawled up his body.

“It was quite clever.” 

Harry had to stop this. That strange connection between them flared as Riddle came closer, her knees burning into his sides, and he was drowning once again in jasmine and vanilla. 

_ That smell _ —

“Shut up,” Harry said, wincing when Riddle jabbed the wand into his ribs. “You should just bloody kill me and get this over with.”

There was a moment where neither of them said anything. Riddle’s eyes trained on him, while Harry tried to look anywhere but her naked body, and then Riddle was laughing.

She traced the tip of her wand up his body once again, a teasing, featherlight touch. Delight alighted over her features, cheeks glowing with something Harry wasn’t sure was strictly humor.

_ Don’t think about it, Harry. You don’t want to go there. _

“Kill you? Oh, you silly little boy.” 

Unease twisted in his stomach when Riddle’s lips curved into a devious smile, her eyes glinting with something terrible and baleful.

“You’re not going to—why?” Harry stammered when one of Riddle’s hands tugged on his hair and yanked him up until he was level with her face. Her eyes were on his, his own face reflected in the inky pools.

“Because,” Riddle whispered, pausing only to lean in closer, pinning him to the floor with the weight of her gaze. His mouth opened despite himself, coaxed open by that tantalizing scent of jasmine and vanilla that began to perfume the room once again. 

_ Fuck _ , Harry was starting to hate it. If he had to smell jasmine and vanilla one more time—

“Dead men tell no tales, and I  _ find _ —”

Harry cursed when he turned his gaze away to only get an eyeful of her breasts. Her nipples were taut and pink, and Harry couldn’t help but stare at them even as Riddle continued to talk.

“That I cannot let you go without unearthing your secrets, one by one.”

Heat began to pool low in his stomach, a sudden spell of dizziness overtaking him when Riddle’s lips grazed his. Her pink tongue was peeking from between them, wet and glistening—

Harry tried to fight this, his shoulders trembling with both his need to escape and fight. 

Riddle yanked him closer, and Harry’s insides churned, his toes  _ curled _ at the contact. Their mouths pressed together, the touch like a shock of electricity down his spine. 

It was growing harder and harder to resist, the groove of Riddle’s wand against his chest becoming lost to the taste of Riddle’s mouth.

“My little oracle, you’re going to tell me everything you know.”

Riddle’s teeth caught his lip, and Harry gasped, the sharp sting pooling south.

_ You have to stop her, you have to— _

A pleased groan escaped his lips when Riddle yanked him nearer, the wand now climbing up his chest.

_ Harry… _

There was something strange happening to him, twisting his perception into pretzels. A something he’d never experienced before, unlike even the weakness that had consumed him when Slughorn had been showing off their poti—

The thought was like a bucket of ice water on heated skin.

Harry yanked his mouth away, grateful that he had that bit of freedom, and spat on the floor. The taste of Riddle lingered in his mouth. It made him nauseous, his gums ache with something he refused to acknowledge.

“No! I know what you’re trying to do,” Harry shouted, heat burning against his cheeks when Riddle only smiled, pulling away to flash him another glimpse of her naked chest.

She looked at him for a moment, before she released him. Harry yelped, pain spreading up the back of his head when his back slammed to the floor.

_ Fuck. _

“Oh? What do you  _ think  _ I am trying to do, Harry?”

The scent of vanilla and jasmine consumed him, and Harry’s eyes drooped with its intensity.

His mouth watered at the memory of her skin in his mouth, at the sound of Riddle’s low moans when his mouth had tasted her, her juices thick on his tongue.

_ Don’t you want to touch her? _

A whimper crawled up his throat, the foreign sensations eroding what little self-control remained. He was drowning in this scent, in  _ her _ . He didn’t know why, didn’t  _ care  _ to find out. His insides were burning, his soul screaming to touch her, to please her, to do  _ something _ .

“Tell me, Harry.”

Her voice echoed in his head, rattled the very foundations of his thoughts.

Riddle’s fingers slid over her chest, her fingers caressing her pink nipples until they were swollen and hard before dipping lower, her fingertips catching at the waistband of her underwear.

“Don’t make me ask you again.  _ Tell me what it is that I am trying to do _ .”

The command was sharp. It echoed in his brain, bearing down on his will until he couldn’t think to disobey.

“You’re trying to-to manipulate me into doing what you want.”

Riddle tilted her head to one side, her wand in one hand and the other still toying with the hem of her silky underwear.

“Is it working?” Riddle asked, and Harry swallowed when his gaze fell to the hand tugging on her knickers. 

“No,” Harry denied, even as everything screamed  _ yes _ . It was a chant in the back of his head, a cry that bore down on his will. 

“Poor thing, you never stood a chance,” Riddle said, her voice anything but pitying as she finally pulled her knickers entirely off, leaving her garter belt and stockings in place. 

Harry’s breaths came to a halt, his heart thundering within his chest a mile a minute.

“Your mistake was letting me play with that potion all on my own, you know,” Riddle began, pressing closer, the loud clacking of her wand hitting the floor a whisper in the back of his mind. 

All he saw was Riddle. 

“It gave me enough time to consider my best approach for dealing with your indifference,” Riddle continued, one of her hands catching onto his shoulders, pressing him further into the floor as the other began to trail over her stomach. The contact spread through him like a wildfire, and he couldn’t stop the low moan that crawled up his throat at the sensation.

“And then when I discovered just how  _ deep  _ our connection went, the way you practically melted into my fingers when I touched you—” Riddle’s voice had dropped to a sultry murmur.

“You’ve no idea how long I’ve thought of you, how many hours your thoughts had left me lying in bed, wondering just what you  _ knew _ —”

Her fingers dipped between her thighs and Harry could only watch as Riddle parted them, her eyes on his, as the sound of wetness met his ears. Then, came the scent of vanilla and jasmine. Delicate and powerful all at once, his lungs were filling to the brim with it.

“And now, here you are, at my  _ mercy _ .” 

Soft gasps tumbled from his mouth when Riddle began to touch herself, her middle finger sliding over a small nub above her opening. She rubbed circles around it, slow and steady. Precise in a way that Harry’s tongue had not been.

“Funny what a little magic can do.”

The scent was a thick perfume in the air now, and Harry groaned, when Riddle continued to touch herself, the slick sounds of her fingers too loud to his ears.

“Potion-what does it—?” Harry choked on his spit when Riddle’s hand slipped away from between her legs and she smeared the juices on his stomach. It was like a fire had been lit on his flesh, a whine leaving him that was far too high to be coming from  _ him  _ of all people.

“A little too late to be showing interest in Potions now, Harry,” Riddle teased. Her eyes were swirling with desire and something else, something hungry and depraved. It made his insides tighten, made his cock twitch with unwarranted interest when her hands returned to his chest and began to trail light caresses over his collarbones, down his ribs, and up again to the tops of his shoulders. 

It was a slow perusal. The gentleness of her touch did nothing to quell the suffocating desire weighing him down, but nevertheless, it was maddening how she could unmake him with just the lightest press of her fingers.

“What did you  _ do _ —” Harry gasped, wishing more than ever that he could  _ move _ , that he could force her off so that he could ask the questions he needs to, so that he could get the fuck out of here. 

“Nothing permanent, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

Riddle’s thumb flicked over his nipple, and Harry’s screwed shut, a zing of ecstasy crawling up his spine with each touch. It was a miracle he hadn’t lost his train of thought.

“You-you’re not answering my que—” 

A choked moan escaped him when Riddle pinched his nipple, twisting the nub between her thumb and forefinger.

“You understand the effects of Amortentia, correct?” Riddle asked, her other hand latching quickly onto his other nipple to twist it between her fingers. Harry’s insides curled, a soft cry escaping his lips at the abuse.

It was embarrassing how long it took him to gather his thoughts after that.

“Yes-of course,” Harry groaned when Riddle shifted above him, lowering herself until she was sitting on his lap, her heat spreading over his skin.

“It capitalizes on your desires. It provides you with the scents of the person you most desire. But imagine Harry, if a potion could heighten your emotions, could strengthen the scents you associate with the person whom you most desire?” Riddle explained, one of her hands finally freeing his nipple to trail down his stomach.

“Muggles would call them pheromones. However, it is far more complex than that. I am not  _ creating  _ artificial desire through the oversaturation of a specific chemical recognized by our brains.”

Terror consumed him at what Riddle was insinuating.

“No.”

“What you feel is already  _ there _ .” 

“You’re lying!”

Harry turned his head away, unable to stomach the sight any longer when Riddle’s hand grabbed his cock and squeezed, a pleased sound leaving him. 

Her hand was hot against him. It seared him to the bone, consumed him in much the same way the taste of her cunt had broken him down. 

Harry cursed and bit his lip, iron and something musky thick in the back of his mouth. He wanted to gag, to purge himself of this all because it couldn’t be  _ true _ . It had to all be a lie—some elaborate ruse. 

Riddle was a manipulator.

“I will not lie to you, Harry.”

Riddle straddled him, and it took everything within him not to moan, to sink into the heat of her palm when his heart was beating a mile a minute. When a voice, that same damned voice, kept whispering for him to  _ beg _ .

_ Tell her how much you want her, Harry. Tell her how beautiful she is. Tell her. Tell her. Tell her— _

Then, her hand was stroking him, her thumb curling over the head of his cock, teasing the underside and sliding back up to the delicate skin of his balls.

“What you feel, what you  _ want _ , is all you.”

Gasping, Harry glared at her. He clenched his hands into fists, he willed his body to move, to stop himself from breathing more and more of her smell—of  _ their  _ smells, conjoined together. 

“Ah, there will be none of that.”

Harry cried out, a rush of air flooding through his lungs when Riddle increased her pace, the slick sound of her fingers smearing his pre-cum like thunder in his ears. Closing his eyes, Harry tried to ignore it—to will himself to forget that this was happening—

That smell overpowered his senses, need overpowering his fear and despair as quickly as a hot blade cut butter. 

He sank into it, flushing crimson when Riddle moaned low beneath her breath. The sound forced him to open his eyes, to stare at the way Riddle shifted above him, her wet cunt now a hair’s breadth away from where her hand toyed with his cock.

“Is there something you wanted, Harry?” Riddle asked, her voice breathless and low. Her cheeks were flushed pink, a bead of sweat gathering on her forehead from her exertions. 

Harry could only moan in response.

_ Do you want her, Harry? Do you  _ need  _ her, Harry? Tell her what you most desire. _

The voices were driving him mad, splitting him apart. He tried to curb the desperate gasps leaving his lungs, to stop the pitiful groans that she kept forcing out of him with each deft twist of her hand, her thumb teasing his slit.

“You can tell me. It is only you and me.”

_ It is only you and me. _

“Your secrets are safe with me.”

_ Safest place they could ever be. She is the only person that can understand, that knows. _

Harry closed his eyes, crushed by the weight of her gaze, by the flurry of foreign emotions demanding that he break, that he give in,  _ obey _ .

_ All you have to say is please. All you have to do is  _ ask.

“I-I can’t—” Harry choked out, unable to tear his gaze away from the rapid twist of Riddle’s wrist, at how effortlessly she toyed with his prick, unashamed. “I  _ can’t. _ ”

“Oh, but you  _ can _ ,” Riddle said, edging closer and Harry couldn’t take it, couldn’t stop himself from struggling against the bonds holding him on the floor. He needed to move, needed to—

Something snapped inside him. 

“ _ Please. _ ”

He needed to touch her, needed  _ more _ .

There was a moment where neither said anything. It was only their breaths, their hearts, the heat, and the overwhelming smell of sweetness and spice. 

Harry looked up, the prickle of Riddle’s stare dragging him up to look at her, to  _ see _ . Her eyes were hooded, lashes long and curled. She was flushed and pale all at once. The most human Harry had ever recalled seeing her. 

Her hand tightened on his cock and he hissed, unable to contain the sound when her touch became unbearable, when her strokes accelerated, the schlick of wet skin against wet skin unraveling what little restraint he had left.

“Please what?” Riddle leaned in, pressing closer, her cunt so close that if he closed his eyes he could imagine that heat sinking around him, recall the same taste of her in his mouth as he devoured her. “Tell me what you’re willing to  _ give _ .”

Biting his tongue until he bled, Harry tried to tear his gaze away, to stop himself from saying something he would regret. To pretend that he wasn’t about to give into this was  _ madness. _

His bones, his heart, his  _ soul  _ knew it, and yet—

_ Tell her how much you need it. The connection is undeniable, unbreakable… _

Her hand snapped out before he could prepare for it, her fingers seizing his chin, holding his face in place. There was no escaping this moment, his eyes were on hers, imprisoned by the intensity of her gaze, by the power he couldn’t begin to wrap his head around.

“Look at me, Harry,” Riddle whispered, her lips moist and red. Something within him clenched at the sight. “This is who I am, who you are  _ with _ . You cannot hide from me. Just as much as I cannot help myself.”

A weak sound left him, and he sank into the heat of her grip, drinking up the sparks of their skin pressed together, of her control over the chaotic thrum of his thoughts. It was too much, but she was order. She was stable, she was whole, and  _ unmoved  _ by the sway of their connection—

“Harry... _ let me in _ .”

Her eyes were bottomless. An abyss, a cavernous space that he could easily become lost in. There was a voice muttering in the back of his head, a scream, a bright light where his name was shouted endlessly.

Then, he was falling, sinking into the moment. 

Heat slithered over his senses, over his skin. Everything became red, the walls, Riddle’s face, her  _ eyes _ —

_ Slitted and serpentine with the terrifying maw of a creature part man. Crooked teeth spread into a grin, a spidery hand wound around his throat, the edge of a long nail pressing into his trachea, threatening to puncture the skin. _

_ A sting spread around him, bleeding him dry, unmaking him to the night air of the cemetery.   _

_ There was a sharp, consistent pressure against his forehead. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, with the desperate breaths battling in his lungs. It was like a hand, like the ghost of lips tasting around the corners of his scar— _

_ His scar was on fire. It was screaming, a wailing hail. He didn’t know how he knew it. Didn’t know why he was screaming, why the pain was so outside himself that he didn’t recognize it for what it was. _

_ He was an outsider looking into himself, blinded by the red, red, red— _

_ “Harry, I can touch you  _ now.”

_ The voice echoed in his brain, a cacophony, a choir, a thousand voices in his head begging to be heard, and— _

Harry’s head snapped back, a moan caught in his throat when Riddle’s hand grasped the base of his prick, stilling all the pleasurable teasing at the head of his cock and sank onto his length. 

“Harry,” Riddle all but moaned, her insides hot and fluttering, squeezing and crushing him. 

It was too much. It bordered on painful, the tightness, the heat enveloping him completely, but Harry couldn’t stop himself from reaching out, hands suddenly free to grip her hips for purchase. 

He was out of his element, out of control, and  _ Merlin _ .

Riddle rolled her hips, sinking more of him inside, to the hilt, till the warmth of her cunt was pressed to his balls, and Harry threw his head back, his spine bending until it cracked much like glass shattering in a fist.

“O-oh  _ god _ .”

Riddle planted her hand around his throat, and Harry’s stomach clenched, the vision of sharpened claws, of blood, and loss of breath drawing forth unwanted desire.

“My poor boy,” Riddle crooned, her voice anything but pitying when her hand tightened around his throat, depriving him of air once more. 

His own grip tightened on her hips until they bruised skin, but he didn’t think to stop her from choking him. The press her fingers against his jugular sent dark spots dancing along his vision, and the moist heat of her cunt, breaking him.

“How much must you suffer—” Riddle whispered, slowly lifting her hips, rolling them up until the tip of his cock was pressed inside, only to sink back down and rip another choked cry from his mouth. It was single-handedly the best and most terrible sensation he had ever felt, and Harry couldn’t get enough of it. “—before you see?”

Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes when Riddle leaned in to kiss along his cheeks, the pressure gentle and reverent even as her fingers choked him.

“Marked before you even knew who you were, abandoned to a world where  _ muggles  _ saw fit to punish you by virtue of your identity…”

Riddle’s voice had gone soft, and Harry stared up at the ceiling, unable to bear looking at her as he cunt crushed him with her heat and strength, prying out emotions he didn’t want to face with his cock in a monster. The scent of jasmine and vanilla had all but melted away. It was only the smell of her sex, the soft fragrance of her skin that remained lodged in his nostrils.

“You and I are more alike than you gave me—gave  _ us _ —credit for,” Riddle continued, sliding up his cock and eliciting another choked sound from his throat. It was barely there, more a whimper than a groan, when her hand refused to let him breathe, her gentleness more destructive than any violence she could act on.

“I know what it is like to be rejected, to be treated differently for being who I am, of who I have potential to  _ be _ .”

Riddle’s voice became brittle now, her pace increasing, the pressure he’d all but ignored for the past few minutes pulsing with the weight of her hands on his neck, of her cunt milking him dry, sliding wetly, unabashedly along his prick. 

It was disgusting, wrong, and—

_ Incredible, isn’t it? How you slipped together seamlessly? As if you both belonged, as if she were fitting around the empty hole you didn’t know you had?” _

“I was only a girl when I came across my magic, when boys were the only ones permitted to explore the world, to educate themselves of the wonders of the universe without societal restraints, without being chained to the home because of their  _ sex _ .”

Riddle kissed down his ear, licked at the lobe, bit into the skin until it was throbbing, until it hurt to hold back, to not scratch along her sides, to touch her in much the same way she did him. His blunt nails scraped along her hips, up her sides, to her breasts, finally  _ touching  _ the skin. 

His thumbs grazed her nipples, watched them harden further in his hands, exploring the weight of them, even as her mouth savaged his ear, sucked and bit lower on his neck, narrowly avoiding where her other hand fit around his throat.

“Imagine my surprise when I learned how different I was, that there was a world outside of the one in that disgusting orphanage, where I was free to be myself, where my femininity would not strip me of my power, of my agency…”

Harry’s hands fell away when Riddle tore her mouth from his neck, her hand on his throat leaving him to grasp at his wrists and push them above his head; the power imbalance was as heady as it was frightening, and he wanted  _ more. _

There was something manic, something savage about her now, her lips twisted into a fierce smile, her eyes glinting red even while ringed with darkness. 

It should have frightened him, and it  _ did _ . Merlin was he scared of her, of what she could do to him with his vulnerabilities exposed to her gaze. But it was that fear that made him harden further inside her, made him swell, near the precipice he had no idea he was toeing the edge of.

“In this world of magic and wonder, I can be  _ anything _ —” Riddle rocked her hips, and Harry snapped his head back, his eyes rolling to the back of his head when she set a brisk pace, sliding up and down, the wet squelch of where their bodies met drowning out the thoughts racing in his head. “—The opportunities are limitless. What has been taken from me, what has been denied, can be  _ mine _ .”

Harry’s toes curled when the pressure became unbearable, when Riddle’s cunt, the harsh nails digging into his wrists, the hand now sliding down his chest to circle around a nipple, nearly drove him over the edge. He could taste it in the back of his throat, the desperate jolt of his belly, the rapid beating of his heart demanding more,  _ more, more— _

“As mine as you have always been, my  _ soul  _ wedged inside yours, crying out for its master…”

_ Soul? _

Harry didn’t have the presence of mind to ask, to demand that she explain what she meant. Not when laughter began to echo in his head, foreign and familiar. The sibilant drawl he was sure he’d heard once before.

Riddle’s nails cut up his chest, dragging red lines until they stopped just where their bodies met, and Harry didn’t think about the voices anymore.

“I’m not—” 

Harry tried, but stopped at the sight of Riddle’s cunt engulfing him.

“You’re  _ mine _ ,” Riddle groaned, her stomach jolting, her insides squeezing him so tightly that his spine bent, hands shaking violently as her fingers slid over her cunt, her thumb nudging at the nub of pink right above her opening.

Harry watched on, mouth dry, lungs tight, as she toyed with it, her hips shaking erratically, crushing him more tightly inside her. It was borderline painful, the vice-like grip like that of a serpent crushing its quarry between its coils, and—

Riddle glanced up at him, her dark eyes flashing a bright red, teeth catching at her bottom lip.

Harry splintered. 

His spine bowed, breaking out of Riddle’s grip on his wrists to drag her closer, to kiss her, to swallow her pleased hums and drown out his own screams as he came inside her, white flashing behind his eyelids. 

It was simultaneously too much and not enough. Riddle cut him, her hands catching onto his hair, yanking him nearer, her teeth biting into his bottom lip until he bled, the taste of iron and something sweet suffocating him.

Riddle kissed him as if she wanted to devour him, to suck out the bit of soul, the bit of herself she saw in him wedged in his ribcage, caught in the mandible of his jaw. 

It didn’t make sense, when there was nothing to this connection between them. But Merlin, his hands were sliding down her back, gripping her like a lifeline as she fucked him, her hips milking him of each bit of come he had to offer.

He slumped against her when she milked him dry, when the velvet of her cunt became too much, too painful. He struggled against her, but Riddle did not let him go, did not let him breathe, depriving him of air with the weight of her tongue grazing his teeth.

A pained whine left him when Riddle tore out of his mouth after his weak protests, her own mouth wet and red with his blood. She licked her lips, a flash of something hungry in her gaze, and then she was sliding off him, her hand now replacing the warmth of her pussy.

Her fingers pumped him, and he shook, pulling away, trying to escape the overstimulation—

“S-stop.”

She didn’t, thumb toying with the skin, sliding down to his balls to caress the wrinkled flesh. Her other hand was out of his range of vision, somewhere behind her, reaching for something and—

“Stop?” Riddle asked, her hand cupping his sack, fingers curling through the skin, wringing another pathetic sound from his mouth that Harry wished he could suppress. 

“Oh,  _ Harry _ .”

Riddle’s hand shot out to grasp the back of his knee, to drag him closer and slip his trembling leg over her shoulder. Her hair was in total chaos, strands dragging over the mess between his legs and navel. 

Harry had half the mind to kick her, but the tightening of her hand stopped him—

Or perhaps, the wand that was suddenly caught between her fingers, pointing directly between his legs, did. Either way, Harry thought better of it. 

“We’ve only just begun.”


	8. la petite mort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end. 
> 
> Not sure if this is the ending you all were expecting. Though, truly, this is the only appropriate end to an insidious story as this one.

She released him after wringing another painful orgasm, lapping her fingers of his essence before cleaning the cum from herself.

It was the first of a series of violations. The dawn of a new form of torture, a shift in their once precarious relationship that left him cold—his soul screaming, for union and separation. Harry couldn’t quite tell. 

“Up you go.”

Harry didn’t flinch when her wand pointed at him, lifting him soundlessly from the ground. His toes hovered inches from the air, but his stomach did not quiver. He was numb—his mind so far away he didn’t even notice when Riddle cut through the space between them to lay a hand on his cheek, only to come away wet with fallen tears.

“They’ll be wondering where we’d run off to,” she said, and Harry shuddered when her palm smoothed over his cheek to slide down his throat. His pulse raced, his insides trembling with terror and disgust. “won’t they, Harry?”

He bit his tongue hard enough to cut, to nearly sever the tip of it with his need to _scream_. It burned down his esophagus, but he didn’t cough or gag. He’d bury it as deeply as need be. Silence himself, quiet the voices shouting at him to—

“But they’ll never know, will they? It’ll be our little secret.”

Riddle’s voice was both soft and loud at the same time, cutting through the thrum of his heart in his ears and his harsh breaths. It was both a reprieve and an act of violence.

He opened his mouth, to speak as she bid him to, if only to get her to _shut up_ , but didn’t. His words never formed. For Riddle, at that moment, had leaned in to press a chaste kiss to his lips—the salty taste of his come transferring to his own mouth.

Harry tried not to gag.

 

* * *

The nightmare did not end with a kiss. It had only begun, as she’d promised weeks after she’d violated him in that classroom.

There was never a moment where he was truly alone—his every waking moment, from the time he first opened his eyes, to when finally closed them, were filled with her.

_Always her._

Her touch and the soft tenor of her voice were all that he heard, even when pushing his head deep under his bath to silence the terror in his head. No matter how hard he scrubbed at his skin, the tingling sensation of her fingers on his flesh never went away.

She was there. In the mirror. Dark eyes, sharp teeth, smiling at him with a knowing gleam in her gaze.

It didn’t matter that days quickly turned to weeks since she’d last touched him. Not when the wound refused to heal, could never heal, with her face a burned image in the back of his eyelids.

Not when his insides wrenched, shriveled up like a fruit left out in the hot sun, to be joined with her. 

 

* * *

It didn’t take long for their separation to end.

She summoned him. It’d been agony, fighting both the strange compulsion pulsing in his chest, and the burning hatred—for himself and her—like lead in his stomach.

It was unsurprising that he’d eventually give in. After days of smoldering eyes and harsh nails pressed against his wrist. Of her tongue curling over her bottom lip, and her ankle grazing his clothed thigh, Harry knew what that meant. 

It hadn’t been subtle. Though, if it had _only_ been her overwhelming physical presence, then Harry could have survived till the end of the term without being caught between the gears of a moving engine.

The end of his tether began with a burn that spread from his wrist all the way up to his elbow. Insistent, thought it was, Harry had done his best to ignore it. It hadn’t been the worst he’d experienced. This pain could never compare to the agony of his own memories—of his thoughts berating him for _enjoying_ it, reminding him that he’d been complicit in his own rape even if it’d been entirely artificial. 

It was a taste he couldn’t get out of his mouth no matter how often he brushed his teeth. Like guilt, like _grief_ , weighing him down like a stone on his back.

Then, the burn had devolved into a call. A twinge in his gut that he was all too familiar with, that he felt with each subtle press of Riddle’s fingers against his skin. His soul was squirming inside him— _no_ , Harry amended— _not his soul. Hers_. It was only ever hers, never his. Always her desires, her greed, her _lust_ like a cloying drink in the back of his throat.

Harry bit inside his cheek to quell the hunger building inside him, to silence the whispering thoughts that quickly turned into _screams._ His or hers, Harry couldn’t tell. They were unison. Demonic and angelic—a chant that thrummed in time with his own heartbeat.

There was no need to guess what this meant. She was desperate, hungry. Curious, maybe, to see just how far she could push. Maybe she wanted to rip him open and see into his brain—to guess his secrets, his intentions, his past—

Harry fought it to the bitter end. Even when it had become obvious, he was going to lose, even when he tried desperately to see Dumbledore, to only be rebuffed by Riddle’s lackies and the bloodcurdling pain that swept him away whenever he _thought_ to see him.

Then, came the desire and all was lost. If there had been doubts as to _who_ was responsible for this, then Harry was certain now. There was no one else that could exercise this much control over his senses, that could awaken these artificial desires. They weren’t his, and yet, somehow, they _were_.

_You will never have to hurt again, Harry. I can ease your pain, love. I can show you wonders beyond your comprehension, sweetling. Take my hand, yes, let me in, darling. Everything will be as the world should be. I can give it all, my soul._

She whispered into his head, endlessly. Tempting him to seek her out, urging him like fingers scraping along his mind to _go_. The words tugged at him by the scruff of his neck to walk up the stairs and toward the seventh floor. Hissed and moaned, screamed and cried—

And Harry eventually let her. 

He always did.

 

* * *

She summoned him every night. And each night, she managed to take something from him. Whether it was the memories of his parents—what little he had of their smiling faces in his tiny photographs—or the shining eyes of Ron and Hermione, sitting at his side in lessons.

She was careful. Always so careful to hurt him just so, to push him to his breaking point, when he was most willing to see it end, when his mind was at its weakest and best to pry open for her viewing pleasure. 

But _pain_ , no. That was never good enough for her. She knew better, had known better, that torture would never get her the results she desired. Harry had told her as much, like the idiot he was, the reckless, helpless thing he’d become when her wand sliced him down the middle, only to mend it all back up again.

If only he had known that that was just a teaser. A prelude, the beginning, a metaphor for what she would do to his mind once he was weak enough.

Now, she never hurt him. Never more than what was necessary to make the pleasure singe his insides. Always a slight pressure, a tiny prick of her nails against his bare back.

_How about a taste, boy? I'm sure you're just dying to know._

And Merlin, did she show him. She gave him more than he could stand, more, and more, and  _more_.

When they were alone, her hands were her greatest weapons. The same hands that could wield a wand with precision and care, were the same ones that closed around his throat and choked the life out of him.

 _Careful, darling, wouldn't want to push you too far_.

His cock buried inside her, enveloped, crushed like a closed fist around his skin. That was the closest to pain she entertained when she wanted to extract thoughts from his head— _little secrets, she called him_ —between her and him. So soft, so precious, so  _kind_ , and cruel of her all at once. 

And _god_ — 

He always broke apart inside her. She mangled him, twisted him in her arms in the mockery of two lovers embracing, to whisper filthy promises of a future that would never be. That  _could_ never be.

Not if Harry could help it.

 

* * *

 

Her hunger never stopped.

Harry had lost count of the number of times she burrowed into his brain, her fingers barely breaching his arse. She was tempted, he knew. She was curious—like a monster wanting to see just how far she could take him.

His tears had long since dried by then, but if he had any left to cry, Harry would have when she carved him open with her nails. Splayed his legs open for her inspection and thrust her fingers inside with only blood and sweat as the lubricant between their bodies. It was like a wildfire in his veins, his agony, his voice mangled by the end of it when he couldn't stop screaming. When scream after scream tore from his lungs before they were swallowed up by her voracious mouth.

She ate them. Just as she devoured his secrets, her dark eyes flashing red before she was in his head—defiling him in an entirely different way.

 

* * *

The gentle nights were the worst ones.

When her naked body clambered over his, her hands caressing his cheeks, her cunt wrapped around his cock in a soft embrace. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend that this wasn’t Riddle. He could imagine that the body he was thrusting into, the hands smoothing over his cheeks, and the legs weighing on his thighs, was someone else. Someone kind. Whole. 

But she never let him close his eyes. Never around her.

There was no pretending who this was—who was coaxing another orgasm that night, whose lips were stretched into a grin, hair like inky rivers running down her bare chest.

This was Tamsin Riddle.

And her name was etched into his skin, _scarred_ into her soul.

 

* * *

 

The school year finished, but Riddle was far from done with him.

There was no running from her.

No washing away her touch from his flesh. When nothing short of an exorcism could get rid of her stain.

 

* * *

Summer had passed quickly.

And seventh year was just beginning.

Harry wondered if he’d ever left at all. If somehow, this year, things would be better. Doubtful that things could be worse when he'd hit rock bottom. There was only ever up from this point now.

What a stupid hope.

She was the same monster he’d left behind.

Same teeth, same skin, same dark eyes, hungry for his secrets. 

She'd never be satisfied with just his soul.

 

* * *

Harry thought he’d known true evil when he’d stared it in the face in his first year at Hogwarts.

Oh, how he’d been mistaken. 

Evil was not the monster hiding behind the turban of a mad man’s head. No, that wasn’t it.

He knew it now. Could trace his fingers over the patterns and pluck out the shapes of malice incarnate now. 

Evil was the creature looming above him on the cold, hard ground. With eyes glittering in the dimly lit classroom, Harry could not escape the shape of her in the shadows even after the haze of his orgasm had faded.

“Does it hurt?”

Something sharp curled low in his belly, but he didn’t otherwise complain. He didn’t dare. Not yet. He was waiting. Waiting for her to lower her guard so he could—

“Harry, _darling_ — ”

A shaky breath escaped him, his eyes watering with agony when she curled her fingers inside him, clawing at his innards. It was a corrosive agent, poisoning him from the inside, and it took everything in him to level her with an attentive look.

No point delaying it now. She was clawing him open, stretching him past his breaking point.

“—answer me when I speak to you.”

Harry’s shoulders trembled, his fingernails cutting crescents into the palms of his hands. It hurt so much, more than it had a right to. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, not again. He’d given it to her once, let himself become swept away by the strange smells in the air, of her skin on his tongue.

Never again.

“F-fuck off.” He garbled, knowing that this would only reward him with more pain. But the pain was better than the mind-scrambling pleasure. At least he was himself when his toes weren’t curled with ecstasy or his heart swollen with blood.

“Come now,” she chided, forcing another finger inside.

Harry saw stars, a scream catching in his throat. _Merlin_ , it was as though she were yanking his intestines straight out from his arse. 

“No need to be rude. I’ve been more than kind.” 

Harry laughed, winded. It was a manic sound, crazed. When had he devolved into this? Turned into another toy for a madman to wind up before letting him go?

His laughs could not be contained. They came endlessly, without pause even when Riddle was stuffing his arse full of fingers, nails catching against his skin. It didn’t matter.

The nightmare would be over soon. As it always did when she summoned him to an abandoned classroom.

She would take her fill of him—fuck him, violate him in every conceivable way one could imagine—before taking her leave, his insides hot from the abuse. This time would be no different, he could sense it in the gleam in her eyes, of the way her teeth caught on her bottom lip with ravenous hunger.

“It is through my providence alone that you still live, that I choose to _pleasure_ you.” 

Harry tuned her out, gaze shifting away fromher beautiful face—the shell of a monstrous creature lurking in her person suit—to the cracks in the ceiling above their heads. 

There were hundreds of them. Millions, maybe. He always took care to count them when he was able, to distract himself from the whispered words of praise and lies that left her mouth. 

“Tell me something,” Riddle went on, but Harry only nodded without truly listening, toes curling with misplaced pleasure when her fingers grazed something inside him.

A low keening sound escaped him, his eyes shooting wide open when she ground against it again, and again, and _again_ —

“Where is it that you go, little boy?” She asked, but Harry was too far gone now to even consider answering. His tongue sat heavily in his mouth, wedged between his top and bottom teeth. They cut the flesh, bled out until he was drinking blood like a hungry leech.

“N-none of your—” Harry gasped before he could finish, eyes rolling to the back of his head when Riddle yanked her fingers out of his arse, slick with lubricant and blood. It would be agony come morning, but it would pass.

He knew it would. 

Then, she was pressing closer. Her milky thighs pressed against the backs of his, her hands arranging his legs to fit comfortably atop her shoulders.

 _This would be the last time_.

 

* * *

 _Delicious._  

Everything about him was mouthwatering.

She couldn’t explain her obsession, her desire to see the fire spark in his gaze.

And _yet_ —

How she wanted. _Needed_ to take those eyes for herself, to make it hers as was everything she’d stolen for herself in the orphanage—at Hogwarts.

His eyes were fine jewels, hiding secrets only meant for her to discover. Of futures long-lived, of realities that would answer all the questions she’d had burning in the back of her mind since the first day. 

_I see you, Riddle._

A moan bubbled up her throat when she thrust forward, shoving her makeshift phallus into his opening. She couldn’t feel it, even if she wanted to, but just the sight of it disappearing inside him—of her essence touching him where no other would dare to, was enough to drive her mad.

Her fingers slipped down between them, her middle finger finding her clitoris to rub it raw, to push herself closer to her own climax at the cacophony of moans tearing out of her boy’s mouth.

_More._

She didn’t stop thrusting, even when her thighs began to burn with her exertions. Nothing could tear her away from the sight of her cock opening him wide, stretching him beyond what her own fingers did.

A pleased hum sounded above her, and Riddle tore her gaze away from pink flesh glistening with lubricant to stare into the bright green of her latest conquest—of a boy that never should have been but _was_.

By all accounts, he shouldn’t be here, in this moment. In her arms, caught between terror and pleasure as she took her fill of him. But there they were, her own face reflected off the green of his irises and—

Her hips stuttered with shock, her mouth falling open when Harry’s lips broke into a grin, too wide. Unhinged.

_Beautiful._

Her hand slipped from between her lips to reach for her wand, to level it on his head, but she was met with empty air. It was no longer on the floor beside her, where she’d left before filling him to his breaking point with her fingers.

Then, there was a pressure against her stomach. A point that pressed insistently against her abdomen.

Her hips stopped, her mouth falling open with a surprised exhale.

It was her wand perched precariously between his fingers. The familiar white was pushing against her stomach, hard enough to bruise, but the pain hardly registered.

Not when all she could see was green, glittering jewels burning with—

“You won’t do it.” 

There was a moment where neither of them said a thing, her racing heart—oh, how odd that was, for it to be racing in this manner—and his heavy breaths. They echoed in the silent classroom, uninterrupted.

Harry’s arm did not waver.

“Your noble heart would not be able to stand it.”

Riddle took him in, from the disheveled curls on his head to the gleam of sweat on his bare chest. A smile curled over her lips when Harry did not respond, her hand coming up to catch his wrist. She made sure to aim the end at her heart, euphoria, unlike anything she’d ever felt before coursing through her veins.

“There’d be nothing separating us. You’d be a murderer all the same. My death on you—”

“Shut up!” Harry hissed, voice splintering over the edges.

His arm did not tremble even when his voice did when his eyes gleamed with unshed tears.

“A-avada Kedavra!”

Surprise and something else, something bittersweet consumed her.

It was the greatest performance of all. Like dark chocolate on her tongue, to witness the millions of splinters of his soul— _their soul_.

Then, all went green.

His eyes, his pain, his _break_ , her laughter, the last thing on her mind.

 

* * *

Funny that, no matter how often Harry had killed her, she never could just stay dead. 

He’d just have to kill her again.

                                    And again.

                                                _And again_.


End file.
